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Just watched The Cove.

Besides its effectively genius simple mediation techniques (TVs strapped to protesting bodies in public spaces jihad-style; happy dolphin balloons armed with covert spycams), the fundamental argument is… unarguable. Dolphin slaughter should become an embarrassing harpoon in Japan’s public image.
- as top-of-the-food-chain eaters (like us), dolphin meat contains toxic levels of mercury (as much as 2000ppm, when safe consumption levels are .4 ppm);
- the yearly slaughter in Japan is an apparent add-on to the lucrative business of supplying tourist complexes with dolphins for swim n pet pools. Dolphins should not be kept in most or all captive situations, it causes high  and depression to animals who need complex social and geographical ranges.
- most allegiances to Japan’s position on dolphin and whale killing are bought.

You can take action by texting the word DOLPHIN to sms # 44144.
The movie’s populist/activist site  is  here.

I followed the rather complex discussion on H-Net’s H-Animal after the SeaWorld killing of  trainer Dawn Brancheau by the orca named Tilikum. What I’m going to note is a stretch, I  admit, but not unlike  eating meat (which I do), in which the animal in its natural state has long disappeared and what you are left with is something delectable, if not cleanly packaged, animals in zoos and aquaria are easy to perceive as a packaged commodity, far removed (even with info graphics as to their origin and natural ways of life). Neither eating meat nor consuming animals as entertainment – even when framed as sustaining or nourishing or educational -  is defensible.

As usual, a better summary lies elsewhere.
Excerpt from Andrew Revkin’s dot.earth, one of the  NY Times’ blogs:

I asked Carl Safina, the marine biologist, ocean campaigner and author, whether he thought utilitarian or ethical arguments dominated the film. Here’s what he said:

The film is an astonishing achievement. On your question about our relationship with fellow species, this question can be debated along several lines: sustainability, human health, humaneness, and our relationship with other species.

Killing the dolphins in those numbers is clearly sustainable.

Their meat is high in mercury but eating a little won’t hurt you, although eating it routinely could cause problems.

The dolphins are capable of panic and pain, both of which they suffer in this hunt. For millenniums, seafarers and shore-dwelling people have almost universally found dolphins to be beautiful and inspiring, and for that reason as well as their high intelligence, the human relationship with them has been special.

However, I’m uncomfortable forcing my values on other people. I like to catch and eat fish; some people understandably find that immoral. Eating dolphins is also unnecessary, but we all like to do a lot of unnecessary things, from playing baseball to going for a drive on a Sunday to eating hamburgers. And certainly Americans kill and eat tremendous numbers of cattle, which, like dolphins, are warm-blooded mammals that suckle their young.

But perhaps the most universal hallmark of human progress is the desire to minimize infliction of suffering. We have strict codes for how animals slaughtered for food must be killed, and much of it has to do with lessening their suffering.

The main problem with killing marine mammals — a much bigger problem than whether a small amount of killing is sustainable — is that it is cruel. Every real advance in human thought has had to do with expanding our circle of compassion. Cruelty to animals seems to parallel cruelty to people. So, I think the international condemnation of the dolphin killing is fair enough. There is no denying the fact that it is brutal business.

Personally, I detest the dolphin killing. One cultural aspect is worth noting: it is curious that the Japanese hunt seems to arouse more ire than the Faeroese pilot whale hunt, which is equally gruesome. Perhaps this is mere cultural bigotry. Perhaps it is because Japan’s behavior regarding dolphins, whales and fishing is so outside global norms. And because their policies in international bodies such as fisheries commissions, the whaling commission, and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species are disruptive enough to have global consequences.

Another fascinating aspect of the film that I discussed was simply that Mr. Psihoyos had perfected a new way of telling true stories that is something other than journalism — and fills a gap as the resources and reach of traditional media shrink.

With small high-definition cameras and the power of the Web, anyone — from a community activist to a journalism student — can now document and disseminate imagery on issues that matter. Also, activists have recruited enough supporters (Bob Barker buying a ship for the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, for instance) that they can patrol the vast southern ocean tracking Japan’s whaling fleet when the media, and even other governments, are unable to do so. In the end, as I’ve been saying lately, it appears that traditional media are a shrinking wedge of the expanding pie of global electronic storytelling. “The Cove” is an example of someone creatively filling the void.

image from Encyclopedia Brittanica's Advocacy for Animals

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The Urban Wilderness Action Center (UWAC) is a project initiated by Jon Cohrs, in collaboration with the Eyebeam Student Residents (New York), Stephanie Pereira, and UK-based artist Kai-Oi Jay Yung (UK). The UWAC project includes a web platform uwac.anewfuckingwilderness.com and a day of action where people from NYC, Berlin, and London will design and disseminate guerrilla gardening projects.

UWAC DAY is Saturday, March 20. Each of four lead cities will host a day of free artist-led interventions that respond to urban wilderness. We will document the day through a live Twitter, Flickr, and video feed streamed through the UWAC website.

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
Live video chat with all four sites: 3PM EST
Ongoing live Twitter feed from each project site at #UWAClive

1–6PM EST, NYC:
Join us at Eyebeam for a series of FREE and open to the public events:

• Eyebeam Student Residents Caroline Spivack, Jade Highleyman, Luther Cherry, Spencer Brown, and Zoe Penina Baker are working with artists Doris Cacoilo and Sonali Sridhar and gardener / window farmer Maya Nayak to workshop a guerrilla gardening andventure. Participants on UWAC Day will craft and distribute their own plant-based urban intervention.
• Tattfoo Tan (artist) will be onsite at Eyebeam collecting pledges for environmental stewardship, and teaching people the basics of urban friendly, worm-based composting. Free worms!
• Matthew Slaats (artist) will be at Eyebeam signing up participants to join Freespace, an initiative which will be made up of are forgotten spaces, private spaces, lost spaces. People are invited to go out and find and reclaim a space, or donate a space they control in some way for a period of time.
• Boswyck Farms will be demonstrating hydroponic systems, and introducing their new Mobile Guerrilla Kitchen
• Liz Neves (healthy home consultant) will invite participants to re-establish wilderness in NYC by recreating a lost world where beavers dammed and turtles swam in flowing streams, and foxes frollicked under towering trees.
• Safari 7 will invite participants to embark on a self-guided tour of urban wildlife along the No. 7 Subway line. Listen in, grab a map, and go!
• Jay Weichun (filmmaker/artist) will be onsite from 2-6PM making flower bombs. Using a simple mixture of regional wildflower seeds, soil and clay, flower bombs are a fun way to spread color and life to places of neglect. Participants are invited to make their own flower bombs and form their own flower bombing collectives!

2–6PM CET, Berlin:
Myriel Milicevic + Jon Cohrs are organizing the Berlin Micro-Turf Expedition. With a team of self-defined experts they will survey parking lot ecosystems, abandoned infrastructures, trade routes, and micro habitats of Berlin by dissecting the fringe-ecologies within the city. The expedition will report back live with its band of specialists who will setup up camp in several different areas in Berlin. Using a methodology that analyzes ecological succession the expedition will collect samples, map wildlife, illustrate the topography, detect seismographic data, and observe the micro-climates to create scientific models of future urban habitats.

3–6PM GMT, London:
Everbloom Pocket City Pollination: Kai-Oi Jay Yung Kai-Oi Jay Yung organises Everbloom Pocket City Pollination, a day of urban wilderness activity between 3-6pm, Saturday, March 20 across North and East London. Everbloom will unify rogue concrete cultivation experts and integrated social gardeners in synchronised urban wilderness activity across Harringay to Shoreditch. Private and public action will share skills and deploy guerrilla tactics across multiple sites and activities; from inner city housing, parking lot and religious grounds to council endorsed Memorial site. Actions involve a chance to share skills, meet fellow green belts or beginners and undertake some clandestine activity; from edible wild flower patchwork exchange, vegetable balcony advisory, pumpkin planting and mistreated yard clear up to a geo-map seed bombing walk.

There are two public urban wilderness events to get involved in on the day, with Tim Osborn at Furtherfield, and dispersal of the latest seed vegetable capsule technology in an exploratory walk across Shoreditch. This is a chance to join forces, bring some seeds and experiment in subversive gardening tactics to cultivate our forgotten, unlikely concrete settings for a healthier, self-regenerating city garden

Everbloom resists inertia of urban environment beyond risk of getting arrested and into walk to work. Yung serves cohesive mulch, pollinating communication between the loci events to generate and configure process, stimulating healing landscape.

Pocket City Pollinators include: Stoke Newington Transition Group, Friends Of Arnold Circus, The New Hanbury Project, Tim Osborn, Vanessa Harden and Sam Varney. Participants include: local residents, recovering addicts, university students and passers by.

9PM CET, Amsterdam:
Urban Wilderness Amsterdam: ElectroSmog goes Schijnheilig. Amsterdam, a city once known as a happening place, is suffering from the bureaucratic drive to over regulate. In the nineties, an abundance of underground initiatives marked Amsterdam as a home of spontaneity and experimentation. Squatted cultural centers lined the waterfront, free radio stations populated the air waves. Due to sparked up property prices and an ever growing political pressure to formalize everything and anything, Amsterdam underground culture has dissipated. Instead of the metropolis it claims to be, it has become the village we all know it to be. Where one has little chance of running into the unexpected.

As a necessary antidote, the closing event of the Amsterdam Electrosmog festival will take place in the squatted gallery Schijnheilig. There will be lectures on branding and public space, streamed guerilla gardening actions from around New York, London and Berlin, performances, ex-pirateers of radio 100 behind turntables, and much much more. Come along and play!

April 8- April 30
Doha, Qatar
Reality show anyone? I will be participating in Stars of Science, a reinterpreted American inventor - Arab world of sorts. 16 contestants from across the Arab world compete with their inventions for $300,000 in a series that will air on Pan Arab television channels as well as on the show website. [...]