photo by George Peper

Striper Wars     Eye of the Whale     The Man who Knew Too Much     Black Genius     Jesse Ventura     Recently Posted Articles List New From Homero Aridjis "The Sun, the Moon, and Walmart" My friend, the Mexican poet/environmentalist Homero Aridjis, has just released through his Group of 100 organization a petition signed by more than 150 writers and artists from 30 countries, asking Mexican President Felipe Calderon to cancel gold and silver mining concessions granted to Canadian companies in Wirikuta, the sacred territory of the Huichol people. The survival of Huichol culture is at stake. - Dick Russell petitions:   Writers     Intellectuals For more than seven years, I have been researching and writing an authorized biography of Dr. James Hillman, founder of archetypal psychology and one of the most intelligent and engaged thinkers of our time. It has been a great privilege to work closely with him on the book, the first volume of which will be published next spring by Helios Press, an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing. Volume one will be called "The Life and Ideas of James Hillman: The Making of a Psychologist." The obituary that follows appeared in the New York Times on October 27. While the headline is misleading - he was much more than "therapist to the men's movement" - and I would object to his being labeled as "part mystic and part performance artist," overall this serves as a fine tribute to a remarkable man. - Dick Russell James Hillman, Therapist in Men’s Movement, Dies at 85 By BENEDICT CAREY The New York Times, October 27, 2011 James Hillman in 1985. His ideas revived interest in Jung. (photo: Bill Ballenberg) James Hillman, a charismatic therapist and best-selling author whose theories about the psyche helped revive interest in the ideas of Carl Jung, animating the so-called men’s movement in the 1990s and stirring the pop-cultural air, died on Thursday at his home in Thompson, Conn. He was 85. The cause was complications of bone cancer, his wife, Margot McLean-Hillman, said. Part scholar, part mystic and part performance artist in his popular lectures, Mr. Hillman began making waves from the day he became the director of studies at the C. G. Jung Institute in Zurich in 1959. Mr. Hillman followed his mentor’s lead in taking aim at the assumptions behind standard psychotherapies, including Freudian analysis, arguing that the best clues for understanding the human mind lay in myth and imagination, not in standard psychological or medical concepts. His 1964 book, “Suicide and the Soul,” challenged therapists to view thoughts of death not as symptoms to be cured but more as philosophical longings to be explored and understood. A later book, “Re-Visioning Psychology,” argued that psychology’s narrow focus on pathology served only to amplify feelings of anxiety and depression. Feelings like those, he said, are rooted not in how one was treated as a child or in some chemical imbalance but in culture, in social interactions, in human nature and its churning imagination. For Mr. Hillman, a person’s demons really were demons, and the best course was to accept and understand them. To try to banish them, he said, was only to ask for more trouble. He might advise a parent trying to manage, say, a mentally troubled son to begin by “stop trying to change him.” By the time he returned to the United States in 1970s, Mr. Hillman had adapted Jungian ideas into a model he called archetypal psychology, rooted in the aesthetic imagination. It was irresistible for many artists, poets, and musicians. The actress Helen Hunt, the composer and performer Meredith Monk, the actor Mark Rylance and John Densmore, the drummer for the Doors, were among his adherents, drawn in part by his force of personality, at once playful and commanding, generous and cunning. “For all his Saturnine and Martial defense of psyche in our scientifically defined cosmos,” Mr. Rylance wrote in a statement, “he is the most jovial person to sit with.” In the late 1980s, Mr. Hillman and two friends, the poet Robert Bly and the writer and storyteller Michael J. Meade, began leading conferences exploring male archetypes in myths, fairy tales and poems. The gatherings struck a chord, particularly with middle-aged men — Mr. Bly’s book “Iron John” became a best-seller — and by the early 1990s there were thousands of such men’s workshops and retreats across the country, many complete with drumming, sweat lodges and shout-outs to the ancient ancestors. “I don’t know what to say about James,” Mr. Bly said in an e-mail. “You could say, ‘James threw enormous parties for the spirits.’ ” In 1997, at age 70, Mr. Hillman became a best-selling author himself when “The Soul’s Code” reached the New York Times list. He appeared on “Oprah.” “He was in the tradition — or maybe the nontradition — of Alan Watts: a psychologist, thinker and lay philosopher who took concepts from a variety of sources and melded them into his own, particular idiosyncratic take,” said Wade E. Pickren, chairman of psychology at Pace University in New York and editor of the journal History of Psychology. “I think psychology is prone to and also needs people like Hillman who think outside the box,” Professor Pickren said. “Sometimes he’s following his own idiosyncrasies, but sometimes his observations make us all pause and reconsider.” James Hillman, the third of four children of Julian Hillman, a hotelier, and his wife, Madeleine, was born on April 12, 1926, in a room at one of his father’s properties, the Breakers Hotel in Atlantic City. His mother ran an accessory shop. After high school, James attended the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University for two years before joining the Navy’s Hospital Corps in 1944. He studied English literature in Paris at the Sorbonne and graduated with honors from Trinity College in Dublin with a degree in mental and moral science. But it was when he moved to Zurich and enrolled at the C. G. Jung Institute, in 1953, that his imagination took flight. After 10 years as the director of studies there, he zigzagged between Europe and the United States, writing, giving lectures, editing a Jungian journal and, in 1978, landing at the University of Dallas as graduate dean. There he helped found the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture. He wrote more than 20 books and was a sought-after speaker, often drawing a full house, delivering the Terry lectures at Yale and others at Harvard and Princeton, and appearing regularly in Switzerland, Italy and India, as well as at annual symposiums at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Carpinteria, Calif., which houses his papers. Once, early in his career, an editor rejected one of his manuscripts, saying it would “set psychology back 300 years,” according to Dick Russell, who is writing a two-volume biography, “The Life and Ideas of James Hillman,” due out next year. “He just loved hearing that,” Mr. Russell said, “because that’s exactly what he wanted to do.” Mr. Hillman was married three times. Besides his wife, Ms. McLean-Hillman, an artist, he is survived by four children from his first marriage: Julia Hillman of Woodstock, Conn.; Carola Hillman of St. Gallen, Switzerland; Susanne Hillman of Zurich; and Laurence Hillman of St. Louis; as well as two sisters, Sue Becker and Sybil Pike, and a brother, Joel. “Some people in desperation have turned to witchcraft, magic and occultism, to drugs and madness, anything to rekindle imagination and find a world ensouled,” Mr. Hillman wrote in 1976. “But these reactions are not enough. What is needed is a revisioning, a fundamental shift of perspective out of that soulless predicament we call modern consciousness.” Carl Oglesby, a friend and colleague for many years, wrote the Foreword to my first book on the Kennedy assassination, "The Man Who Knew Too Much" (1992, new edition 2003). His first book, "The Yankee and Cowboy War," remains the finest examination of the opposing forces behind the assassinations and Watergate that has ever been written. I will always remember long talks with Carl about recent American history and current politics. He will be deeply missed, and the following obituary tells more of his remarkable story. - Dick Russell 9/13/11 Click here: '60s activist Carl Oglesby dies in NJ at age 76 - San Jose Mercury News Failure to Report On March 26, I participated in a journalists' panel at a conference on how Building 7 came down on September 11th, which took place at the University of Hartford. The discussion was hosted by Mark Crispin Miller, among myself, Craig Unger, and Leslie Griffiths. It covers a lot of territory in terms of what the media refuses to cover, from the Kennedy assassination to global warming. Click here: YouTube - Failure to Report: A Panel Discussion Among Journalists Finally... Finally, the powers-that-regulate have seen fit to take some action, but it needs to happen sooner rather than later. I was interviewed for this article, which appears in the Martha's Vineyard Gazette. - Dick Russell Click here: ‘Scary’ Decline In Striper Stocks - 5/6/11 - Vineyard Gazette Online I'm very excited that my latest book with Jesse Ventura, "63 Documents the Government Doesn't Want You to Read," has made its debut as Number Four on the New York Times hardcover non-fiction best-seller list on Sunday Apil 24. Click here: Best Sellers - The New York Times Over the past couple of months, I've become involved in what's shaping up as a major fight to save the only living coral reef in Baja Mexico's Gulf of California, not far from where I wrote much of "Eye of the Whale," "Striper Wars," and other books. I helped in putting together this editorial, which appeared in the San Diego Union-Tribune on April 21. We need all the help we can get up against a mega-development.   - Dick Russell   The threat to Baja’s underwater ‘rain forest’ By Robert F. Kennedy Jr. & Homero Aridjis San Diego Union-Tribune - Thursday, April 21, 2011 Coral reefs, often called rain forests of the sea, shelter a quarter of all marine fish. In February, the most detailed scientific assessment ever undertaken of these spectacular ecosystems revealed that fully 75 percent are under threat – the most immediate being local pressures for coastal development. Cabo Pulmo Bay in Baja California – home to one of these underwater “rain forests” – is facing one of those threats. Among only three living coral reefs in North America, it lies 40 miles north of San Jose del Cabo, on the eastern cape of Mexico’s Baja California peninsula. John Steinbeck described this 20,000-year-old reef as filled with “teeming fauna” displaying “electric” colors. When decades of overfishing threatened the reef’s existence, the local community convinced the Mexican government in 1995 to protect it by declaring the area a 17,560-acre National Marine Park. In 2005, the reef became a UNESCO World Heritage site. Fishing was banned inside the park, and today Cabo Pulmo Reef’s recovery is considered a prime example of marine conservation in the Americas. It provides refuge for 225 of the 875 fish species found in the Sea of Cortez, including marlin, manta rays, giant squid and several kinds of sharks. Whales, dolphins, sea lions and five of the world’s seven species of endangered sea turtles frequent its waters. Indeed, the coral reef hosts the highest concentration of ocean life within this 700-mile long arm of the Pacific Ocean that separates Baja California from the Mexican mainland. Ecotourism (diving, snorkeling, whale watching) is thriving among the 150 residents of the coastal town surrounding this spectacular marine park. But now Hansa Baja Investments, a Mexican subsidiary of the Spain-based real estate development firm Hansa Urbana, plans to build a massive resort complex directly north of the National Marine Park. The developer has proposed what amounts to a sprawling new city on the scale of Cancún: 10,000 acres including 30,000 hotel rooms and residential housing units, at least two golf courses, 2 million square feet of office and retail space, a 490-boat marina and a private jet port. The construction of the Cabo Cortés project would bring in close to 40,000 workers and their families. This fragile region of desert, dirt roads and traditional small communities would be overwhelmed. Cabo Pulmo Reef would die, killed by saline effluents from the planned desalination plant, chemical fertilizers whose runoff causes eutrophication, and the city’s pollution flowing south on ocean coastal currents straight toward the reef. In early March, Mexico’s secretariat of the environment and natural resources gave the go-ahead for much of Hansa Urbana’s proposal: not only the marina and land developments, but also a 10.5-mile-long aqueduct and 324 acres of roads and highways. The energy-intensive desalination plant – which would discharge 500 liters per second of salt water – and a sewage treatment plant to deal with an expected 39,000 tons a day of solid waste once Cabo Cortés is going full tilt are not yet authorized, but it is considered only a matter of time, as is permission for the pending jetties and breakwaters. The government’s approval came despite the company’s woefully inadequate environmental impact statement, which claimed that pollution from the development wouldn’t affect the reef because ocean currents flow only from south to north, away from the reef. Recent studies show the area’s currents move in multiple directions, largely depending upon the season. In a region of water scarcity, Hansa has been granted a concession of 4.5 million cubic meters per year, meaning it will suck dry the Santiago aquifer, depriving the local population of resources it has depended on for hundreds of years. In authorizing the deal, the government is violating its own laws, disregarding the rules governing environmental impact assessments in Mexico and ignoring its zoning plan for the entire region of Los Cabos. It is up to the Mexican government to stand by its 1995 decision to protect this flourishing and irreplaceable marine nursery. The government must cancel its authorization of the Cabo Cortés development. Only then can the Cabo Pulmo coral reef remain a stellar example of ocean conservation and sustainable ecotourism. For Cabo Pulmo and its people, it is wreck or rectify. How does Mexican President Felipe Calderón want to be remembered? Kennedy is a senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council and president of the Waterkeeper Alliance. Aridjis, a poet and novelist, is the former Mexican ambassador to UNESCO and founder of the Grupo de los Cien environmental organization. My latest book with Jesse Ventura is being published this week by Skyhorse. Read more about it here VENTURA VENTURE Jennifer Harper, The Washington Times, Sunday, April 3, 2011 (Inside the Beltway) "Am I going to run for office again? Right now, I might say 'no.' But I've learned after 59 years on this planet that you never say 'never.' If Congressman Ron Paul called me, I would consider being on his ticket. Whether I'm in as president or vice president, we'd have to flip a coin," Jesse Ventura tells Inside the Beltway, brimming with admiration for the Texas Republican. The former Minnesota governor has much to say. He has a new website and his new book "63 Documents the Government Doesn't Want You to Read" hits bookshelves Monday. Mr. Ventura is making appearances in Manhattan all week, having flown in a private jet from his home in a remote area of Mexico. "I'm suing the Transportation Security Administration on the grounds they violated my rights under the Fourth Amendment, which protects Americans from unreasonable searches and seizures. So I'm not flying commercial," he says, vexed that even as a former Navy SEAL and state governor, he is still treated as a security risk and sent through airport scanners. Mr. Ventura, who hosts "Conspiracy Theory" on TruTV, is a big fan of WikiLeaks but dismisses the mainstream media. He blames CBS' "60 Minutes" for the "downfall" of news after the network discovered it could make big ratings and ad revenue from dramatic coverage. Mr. Ventura also contends that the press has failed in its traditional watchdog role, "creates rather than reports news" and has "dumbed down America" by focusing on celebrities rather than mportant issues. "And idiots like Bill O'Reilly on Fox News won't have me on their show. Think about that. Fox News won't have me on the air, but Al Jazeera will put me on any day. I think that Al Jazeera is a lot more 'fair and balanced' than Fox News," Mr. Ventura says. "And all these knuckleheads who want to run for president, like Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich. Do we really want stupid people to run?" the former wrestler demands. "The greatest thing Americans can do to save our country is to stop voting for Republicans and Democrats. Both parties have been bought out by corporations. I mean, has anyone ever wondered why every secretary of the Treasury in recent years came out of Goldman Sachs?"

Feb. 25, 2011 OF WHALES AND FISH By Dick Russell First, the good news: In mid-February 2011, the Japanese whaling fleet in the Antarctic’s Southern Ocean called it quits because of pressure from the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. Paul Watson’s crew on three ships had been chasing the Japanese fleet for more than a week, making it impossible for them to continue operations. This year, the courageous 88-person crew (hailing from 23 nations) had faster ships that could out-run their enemy. The Sea Shepherds shined laser beams and threw flares, forcing the Japanese to claim it was unsafe for them to continue. So the Shepherds provided an “escort” as the whalers headed north toward port again. This marked the first time Japan had been stopped short of taking its quota under the guise of “scientific whaling,” which it’s been doing ever since a worldwide moratorium on commercial whaling went into effect in 1986. The fact is, few Japanese eat whale meat anymore. So meat from the previous hunts has been piling up in freezers or given to schools for the kids’ lunches! In the Antarctic this year, they’d taken 170 minke whales (out of a quota of 850 granted them by the International Whaling Commission, IWC) and two fin whales (of a quota of 50). The Sea Shepherds estimated Japan’s decision to cease-and-desist had saved the lives of about 900 whales. That’s wonderful news, but you still have to wonder whether the Japanese will now use this as leverage to try to strike a deal at the IWC meeting in Norway next spring. In January, WikiLeaks released four confidential cables from the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo and the State Department in Washington, revealing American and Japanese diplomats secretly negotiating an agreement in November 2009. The U.S. was pushing Japan to reduce its killing of whales in the Antarctic, in exchange for getting the right to hunt whales off the Japanese coastline. As part of the “compromise,” the Japanese also wanted the U.S. to take action against the Sea Shepherds. One of the cables has Monica Medina, the U.S. representative to the IWC, saying “she believes the USG [U.S. Government] can demonstrate the group does not deserve tax exempt status based on their aggressive and harmful actions.” As it turned out, the status quo stayed in place at the 2010 IWC meeting. But what does that statement imply - that these brave protectors of our greatest marine mammals are no more than “terrorists?” One of the Sea Shepherd boats even sank a year ago, after its bow got sheared off when a Japanese vessel intentionally rammed it. Why didn’t that action receive condemnation from our government? There was more seeming good news for whales early in February, when Royal Dutch Shell announced it was abandoning plans to drill for oil in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas – at least for this year. Too many regulatory hurdles from the U.S., claimed the biggest oil company in Europe, the biggest being the EPA demanding a more thorough review of what impact diesel emissions from the exploration could have on indigenous communities in the Arctic. But Shell already has more than 30 permits lined up, and they’ve made it clear that their lobbyists aren’t about to stop pushing ahead. Which means that a prime habitat for polar bears – already threatened due to melting ice – and the main feeding ground for the migrating California gray whales is going to be in grave jeopardy. Russia, which has already passed the Saudis as the world’s biggest oil producer, signed an Arctic exploration deal for oil and natural gas in January with none other than BP. Vladimir Putin went so far as to say that BP was the best partner possible, because they’d surely learned their lesson from the Gulf Oil disaster! Since polar bears and gray whales don’t understand international borders, Russia could forge right on if they choose. But no new drilling has been allowed in the Arctic since 2003, and for good reason. Not only is this an area of ice packs and icebergs that pose a threat to drilling rigs and crews – but one of dense fog, sometimes hurricane force winds, and ice cover for as many as nine months that would block any relief ships if a spill occurred. And if the spill was during the winter months, any clean-up would have to happen in the complete darkness that covers the whole region at that time. Oil-and-gas exploration isn’t all that the gray whales are up against. “Gray whales are facing challenges on all fronts, hunting, killer whales, low cow-calf counts, climate change,” says Sue Arnold, CEO of the California Gray Whale Coalition. “Where do you draw the line in the sand?” So far, the National Marine Fisheries Service isn’t willing to do so. It turned down a petition by the Coalition to change the gray whales’ status to “depleted” under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. That would simply mean that a conservation plan needs to be developed. And there’s no doubt one should be. Gray whales were still on the Endangered Species List when their population stood at 17,000. In 2006-7, the population estimate stood at 19,000, and there’s been no abundance study done since. Is there something the government doesn’t want to know, especially when Big Oil is trying to move big-time into the Arctic migration areas? Now for the really bad news from the marine realm, horrifying actually. In late January and early February, more than 10 tons of illegally-caught striped bass were found by the authorities, dead in unmarked gill nets anchored to the bottom of Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay. That’s right, over 10 tons! These types of gill nets have been outlawed since 1985, the last time that striped bass were on the verge of disappearing. Marine fisheries officers only discovered this tragedy when some licensed fishermen tipped them off. And this wasn’t even the end of it. The next week, police recovered more than 5,000 yards of illegal anchored nets – one-third as much as they recovered all of last year! They released whatever live striped bass they could, but thousands were too stressed to survive. “These violations are a shameful theft of the public trust,” Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley said, and made sure that the commercial gill net fishery closed early. But that came too late, and on the heels of what had happened on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, where female stripers migrate for the winter before returning to the Chesapeake region to spawn. Because the state allows the use of large trawl nets, these huge trawlers pulled up thousands of striped bass and dumped most of the “bycatch” overboard. The massive fish kills happened three times in three weeks, the last leaving a trail of dead bass four miles long and half-a-mile wide. State officials should have pulled the plug on the trawling season at the first signs of such wanton waste, but instead they tried piecemeal measures – and the result was disastrous. Already last October, the annual young-of-the-year index of striped bass spawning success in the Chesapeake was well below average for the third consecutive year. The only positive event in recent months was the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) deciding not to raise the commercial quota allowed coastwide. But when it comes to stronger restrictions on the menhaden fishery – the striped bass’ primary source of food - the ASMFC has gone no further than to establish a “committee of experts” to come up with more conservative benchmarks to ensure menhaden stability. This came after a scientific stock assessment found that the overall abundance of menhaden had fallen, catches were well beyond the target levels, and reproductive potential was way down. For one simple reason: a single corporation, Omega Protein, sends out spotter planes and factory ships to net schools of menhaden the size of football fields. The little fish are then ground into meal and oil for use in a variety of products including fertilizer, paint, cosmetics, food for pets and farm animals, and fish oil health supplements. As to the supplements: last October, the Journal of the American Medical Association published the results of a big study. It found that, while obstetricians had been encouraging pregnant women to take fish oil pills to supposedly help the baby’s cognitive development and reduce their own post-partum depression, there was no evidence either was true. Another study, by the Aquaculture Research Institute at the University of Idaho, concluded in November that PetroAlgae protein is better than menhaden fishmeal protein in feeds to raise tilapia, one of the largest volume farmed-fish species. So as striped bass seek in vain for enough menhaden to eat (75 percent of undernourished Chesapeake stripers now carry an infectious disease called mycobacteriosis that can eventually prove fatal), what are our fisheries regulators waiting for? “The time has long since past when the federal government has to act to save the menhaden,” writes H. Bruce Franklin, author of The Most Important Fish in the Sea. “The case of striped bass and menhaden will demonstrate whether their talk about ecosystem management means anything at all.” - Dick Russell is the author of Eye of the Whale (2001) and Striper Wars (2005).

Feb. 28, 2011 An encouraging response from H. Bruce Franklin author of a recent book on the menhaden called The Most Important Fish in the Sea Dick, Thanks for all your great work here. On the menhaden front, there are encouraging developments: The Maryland House of Delegates may be about to lead us in the fight to save menhaden before it's too late. A bill that is about to be reported out of the Rules Committee would ban the sale in Maryland of any product made from menhaden. The state's attorney general has given the bill a green light, and there is strong support in the legislature. Omega's representatives are telling the Maryland delegates that this would force them to shut down their Atlantic coast facilities. I doubt that one state's action could do that, but if we get a movement going for the same legislation in other Atlantic states, this might indeed save the day. I think this is a terrific idea. At a very minimum, it will raise public consciousness about the importance of menhaden, the crash of the population, and the insanity of the reduction industry. A few hours ago, I learned that Maryland Governor O'Mally told people he has a copy of The Most Important Fish in the Sea and says, "I am now ready to pull out my sword" to defend menhaden. Onward! Bruce

Mar. 1, 2011 A Dialogue with Carl Safina A response to my piece from my friend Carl Safina, a prominent oceans advocate whose latest book is "The View from Lazy Point": SAFINA Email: My question: Did outsider pressure speed the end of Japan’s Antarctic whaling or prolong it? From www.carlsafina.org, February 28th, 2011 Japanese Whaling Ship Japan’s Antarctic whalers have given up the season early, having killed few whales. But I wonder: If Westerners had ignored Japan’s whaling, would its whaling have died sooner, of its own internal economic problems? Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, whose boats have for several years harassed Japan’s whaling vessels in the Antarctic, claim victory Sea Shepherd contended as recently as Feb. 19, 2011, that, “The Japanese government is posturing and talking big in an effort to save face. The reality is that the Japanese whaling industry is an antiquated, dying industry.” That’s my point: 1) whaling is a dying industry, 2) whaling has been forced to “save face.” Forcing Japan to save face distracts Japan’s fisheries officials and public from focusing on the fact that whaling loses money. I am not saying Western protest has not been felt. I’m saying it has. My question is whether that has caused push-back that has delayed modernization in Japanese policy. Junichi Sato, executive director of Greenpeace Japan, wrote on Feb 22, that for the past decade he and his colleagues have attacked whaling at its economic core, “showing the Japanese public the corruption that is rife inside the whaling industry. It’s Japanese taxpayer’s money that is continuing to bankroll ocean destruction, through the subsidies required to put the fleet to sea every year. As Japanese people become more aware of the corruption that has been propping their government’s bogus ‘scientific’ whaling, they are also becoming increasingly more vocal about ending it.” If I were a member of Japan’s public, I might be more outraged by foreigners telling Japan what to do, but more convinced that whaling should end if I learned of wasted money and corrupt officials. Japan’s officials have never apologized to foreign critics for whaling (or for excessive tuna fishing), but Greenpeace Japan reports that because it exposed internal scandals, “several Fisheries Agency officials publicly apologized for taking whale meat as gifts.” The second in command of the agency subsequently left his job. “We are seeing many signs that Japan no longer wants to go whaling,” says Junichi Sato, “Its current economic climate is just the tip of the iceberg.” The other problem: whale meat isn’t selling, and even before this hunting season, Japan was faced with what Greenpeace Japan called a, “ridiculously excessive stockpile of frozen whale meat.” Sato, however, believes pressure must be maintained both from inside and outside Japan. Back in May, the New York Times ran an article by Martin Fackler which explained that, “While few Japanese these days actually eat whale, criticism of the whale hunts has long been resented here as a form of Western cultural imperialism. Whaling was… a rare issue where Tokyo could appeal to conservatives by waving the flag and saying no to Washington.” In Fackler’s article, a lawmaker from the northern island of Hokkaido named Tadamasa Kodaira says—in reference to Sea Shepherd’s boats harassing Japan’s whalers—“We can’t change now because it would look like giving in.” I realize it’s not that simple. Inside Japan, some say the real reason the ministry wants to keep the whaling program going is to secure cushy retirement jobs for ministry officials. “It is really just protecting bureaucratic self-interest,” said Atsushi Ishii, a professor of environmental politics at Tohoku University in Sendai. So back to the question: Does outside protest speed or slow the demise of whaling? Let’s ask Isao Kondo, 83, retired after a career as a manager at the now-defunct Japan Whaling Company. Fackler quotes him as saying, “Japan doesn’t like being told what to do. But like it or not, whaling is dying.” Carl: The question you raise is an interesting one. They definitely don't like to be told what to do. I think it more likely that they left the whaling ground seemingly caving in to the Sea Shepherds, in exchange for a quid pro quo to whale off their own coasts. I do think the Japanese have felt a lot of pressure from "The Cove," don't you? - Dick R. ["The Cove" is the Academy Award-winning documentary about the annual Japanese dolphin hunts in the town of Taiji]. Safina's response: My general distinctions are: If it’s profitable and thriving, it’s worth outsider pressure to weaken it (ie. The Cove). If it’s economically non-viable, and it’s a matter of national pride that could delay its collapse (if abandoning it would look like caving in to outsiders), it might be worth walking away and watching it fall. Throughout, insider pressure from within the countries involved is probably always valuable and more powerful.

Journal of Dreams (interview with the poet Homero Aridjis) by Francisco Ruiz Udiel January, 2011 Journal of Dreams is the latest anthology of the Mexican poet and writer, Homero Aridjis (Contepec, Michoacan; 1940), one of the greatest living poets and writers in Spanish. The work, to be published by Fondo de cultura Económico de México, resulted from dreams he had several years ago and which, when he wrote them down, became poems. Ever since “El poeta niño,” published in 1971, he has sought to recover who he had been before the serious accident he had suffered in January 1950 and which nearly cost him his life. Indeed his life was spared and when he “recovered”, he says, he began to read and to write poetry. So it was that in 1970, finding himself in New York and his first daughter, Chloe, about to be born, he began dreaming about the child he had been before the accident, as a way of reconnecting with his own self, since that part of his past had been blotted out. Night after night he dreamed, and upon waking and as if obeying a kind of oneiric discipline, he wrote down his dreams and these, linked into a literary sequence, provided him with a forgotten portrait of himself. The habit of writing down the dreams and turning them into poetic material stayed with him and, in the latest dreams, has become more intense. So that now “I confuse poems with dreams and dreams with poems. The result is that this new anthology consists of pieces of myself merged with experiences and memories.” In this book Homero explores the themes of unreal reality and real unreality, which, in the end turn into dreams THE THEME OF DREAMS IN YOUR WORK IS SIGNIFICANT BECAUSE FOR A LONG TIME YOU WERE KNOWN AS A POET WHO WROTE ABOUT EROTICICISM. My first writing was erotic. The great French writer André Pieyre de Mandiargues (1909 – 1991) once asked me when I was going to write another erotic work like Perséfone. I told him “never,” because I am never going to be 26 years old again, an age when one sees the world differently and is becoming interested in new subjects in the light of other experiences. For example, I experience love at the age I am now which is different from when I was 18. Complete article here

The latest article from Homero Aridjis: Jan. 23, 2011 "Annus Horribilis" Homero Aridjis' daughter, Eva Aridjis, is hopefully soon to embark on her latest film project. Check out the preview here, and a way to become a backer - Dick Russell The Blue Eyes, a supernatural thriller set in Chiapas, Mex by Eva Aridjis — Kickstarter

Dick Russell has been added to the roster of clients of the AEI Speakers Bureau. For anyone interested in booking a speaking engagement to hear Dick on any of several topics, here's a link to their website: www.aeispeakers.com

Dick Russell’s speech at “Save the Whales Day” rally, Santa Monica, Calif., May 22, 2010 What is the International Whaling Commission thinking? How can they be on the verge of legitimizing rogue whaling, and how come the United States seems to be going along with this? The global moratorium on commercial whaling that took effect almost 25 years ago has WORKED. The number of great whales being slaughtered each year has gone from about 38,000 down to between 1,000 and 2,000. That’s still too many, of course, under the guise of so-called “scientific whaling” by Japan, and flagrant violation of the moratorium by Iceland and Norway. Every year, Japan has lobbied to include more species of whales in its quota, and they’ve succeeded in being allowed to take humpbacks and fin whales, sei whales and sperm whales. Every year Japan has continued to bribe small countries with big money grants, in exchange for their joining the IWC and voting with Japan. Now the 88 member nations are likely going to vote in June on a so-called “compromise proposal” that, over the next decade, is supposed to reduce the total number of whales killed. That’s because right now those three rogue countries set their own limits, and under this plan they’d supposedly agree to IWC limits on their catches and do better monitoring and practice more humane whaling. But let’s think about what allowing commercial whaling again really means. It legitimizes Iceland and Norway expanding their fleet in the North Atlantic. They would now be able to legally trade whale meat to Japan. It yields to Japan’s long-sought agenda – after years of opposition – to being able to do whaling along its own coastline. And commercial whaling would be allowed in a designated IWC sanctuary, the Southern Ocean. This comes at a time when Iceland is strongly considering ENDING its whaling as part of an agreement to join the European Union. It comes at a time when Japan already didn’t meet its own allowed take in the Antarctic Southern Ocean, because the Sea Shepherds got out there and did an “intervention” that saved the lives of more than 500 whales. Japan has already said this year that it’s not interested in cutting back the whaling in the Antarctic in return for being allowed to start commercial whaling in its own waters. Iceland has also said they’re not satisfied with the quotas being proposed. So what happens? Does the IWC cave in to their demands? Now, if this proposal passes, South Korea is talking about starting its own coastal commercial whaling operation. We are looking at invigorated markets for whale meat, when most people – including the Japanese – have long since abandoned the practice. It’s this “scientific whaling” loophole that must be closed – instead of opening a whole new door that puts these incredible marine mammals in even greater jeopardy. Think of what happened recently not far from here, when a high-end sushi restaurant called The Hump at the Santa Monica Airport got busted for illegally selling whale meat to its customers. Well, they ended up going out of business, but supposedly these same kinds of operations are going on in other American cities like San Francisco, Seattle, and New York. And people think allowing commercial sale of whales again is going to make that go AWAY? We should be imposing trade sanctions on Japan, Iceland and Norway for already violating international laws. But this hasn’t happened since the Bush Administration. I still love Obama, but I can’t for the life of me figure out why his administration isn’t taking a stand like THAT – instead of supporting the reopening of commercial whaling, which Australia and New Zealand are adamantly against. The simple fact is: Whaling has no place in the 21st century. It is inherently, unacceptably cruel. A barbaric and unnecessary practice. Because of human activity, the whales are already in jeopardy in our time. There’s the deafening Navy sonar that drives them ashore, that the NRDC is fighting so hard to keep in check. Recently a gray whale – the same gray whales that migrate along this shoreline - was spotted on the wrong side of the world. Off the coast of Israel! There haven’t been gray whales anywhere but the Pacific Ocean since the 18th century, when they were hunted to extinction in the Atlantic. So it’s likely this lone whale came down through the ice-free Northwest Passage looking for food and became hopelessly lost. Already gray whales have to search for their food further north because the little amphipods they eat can’t live in the warmer Arctic waters. So a 5,000-mile migration turns into a 6,000 or 7,000 mile migration. And this year, like last year, the number of newborn calves is distressingly low. A generation ago, gray whales started coming up to humans at their birthing grounds in Baja, in the same lagoon where these same humans almost hunted them to extinction a century earlier. The mothers started introducing their newborns to boatloads of tourists, allowing us to actually pet them, in an incredible act of forgiveness. And I’d like to close by reading a brief passage from the conclusion of my book about them, Eye of the Whale: “As the oceans go, so go we. Can we survive global warming? Noise pollution? The wanton carelessness about our habitats? Can we pretend to endure anything that the whales cannot? Can we come to grips with the suicidal tendency to destroy what sustains us? Is this what the gray whales are reaching out to communicate?” Write to President Obama and tell him the U.S. needs to change its position and keep the moratorium on commercial whaling in place at the IWC! (The annual meeting will be held in Morocco, June 21-27. For more information, and to sign a petition to the President, go to: www.earthisland.org/immp/antiWhaling.html)

Japan Blocks Ocean Conservation Measures by Dick Russell | Onearth | March 24, 2010 Protesters outside a Santa Monica restaurant charged with illegally serving whale. George Peper Pacific nation leads fight to stop bans on commercial whaling, sharking finning, and overfishing tuna Not many filmmakers follow up an Academy Award-winning performance with an undercover sting operation. But in his continuing effort to stop the worldwide slaughter of dolphins, whales, and other marine mammals, Louie Psihoyos (who took home an Oscar this month for directing The Cove, about a secrect dolphin-killing operation in Japan) is prepared to expose renegade sushi restaurants across the United States for serving illegal whale meat. His first target -- a restaurant called The Hump outside the Santa Monica airport -- was forced to shut its doors on Saturday after Psihoyos' team filmed the sale of thick, pink slices of meat and smuggled out DNA samples confirming they belonged to endangered sei whales, prompting federal charges. (Importing the meat of marine mammals is illegal under U.S. law.) Psihoyos, founder of the Oceanic Preservation Society, is now going after restaurants in San Francisco, Seattle, and New York that are rumored to also serve kujira (whale). "Wherever you are," he said in an interview outside The Hump before it closed down, "we will find you." Full article here

Battle to Preserve Baja’s Whale Nursery Celebrated, but Threats Remain By Dick Russell - March 8, 2010 - www.onearth.org "....for there is no splendor greater than the gray when the light turns it to silver." -- Homero Aridjis, The Eye of the Whale Gray whales break the water's surface in Laguna San Ignacio. photo: George Peper Ten years ago this month, the Mexican government -- under intense pressure from environmentalists -- announced it was canceling a proposed industrial salt factory at Baja's Laguna San Ignacio. The lagoon serves as the last undeveloped birthing habitat for the eastern Pacific population of gray whales, which were hunted almost to extinction a century ago and continue to make a tentative recovery. (Their Atlantic cousins succumbed to overhunting and have disappeared from the seas.) The sudden and surprising decision to scrap the saltworks was a landmark victory for U.S. and Mexican environmental groups, including the Natural Resources Defense Council, which had been fighting for five years to stop the joint venture between Mexico and Japan's Mitsubishi Corporation. When many of the key participants in that fight gathered last week for a reunion at the remote lagoon, it was clear that ongoing efforts to protect this unique part of the Vizcaíno Biosphere Reserve were having a profound impact. At game parks on the African Serengeti, humans go to view wildlife - but here in Baja, the wildlife comes to you. The gray whales were out to greet everyone, some 200 strong for twice-daily whale watches, exhaling a heart-shaped mist as they chuffed past the panga boats. They sometimes approached close enough for onlookers to touch or even rub the baleen inside their mouths. "A magical gift, transcending time," as Mexican poet and environmental leader Homero Aridjis described one two-hour visit on the water... complete article here

TOWARD A NEW POLICY FOR THE OCEANS By Dick Russell - February 25, 2010 If a single message emerged from a symposium on Marine Sciences and Society at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Diego (Feb. 21, 2010), it was an emphasis on cooperation rather than competition. Perhaps you’ve never heard of Marine Spatial Planning (MSP). I hadn’t. It’s an idea conceived a decade ago in the North Sea, where a "super ring" of renewable energy to supply each country along its shorelines was first being considered. Given the many things going on in a particular area – commercial and recreational fishing, oil and gas development, transportation, military activities, mineral mining, conservation of nature, and the emergence of wind energy and wave energy – it became clear that a more integrated way of managing was required. "Almost no ocean area is untouched by human activity," as Fanny Douvere of UNESCO’s World Heritage Marine Program put it. "So is a spawning area more valuable than a wind farm? How, with conflicts, do we measure cumulative effects on species, habitats and ecosystems, and make trade-offs? And how do we deal with uncertainty in our planning, like climate change?" MSP, which is currently underway in ten countries, is place-based and "a continuous adaptive process, not a one-time plan." In the U.S., as Larry Crowder, Director of Marine Conservation at Duke University, said: "There are 140 laws and 22 ocean agencies that weren’t talking to each other." In June 2009, the Obama Administration sent a memo to every agency, saying that a more coherent framework had to be the top priority. "Right now the MSP plan is largely conceptual," Crowder said. "But it is nothing less than revolutionary, because to this point we’ve been doing everything sector by sector. Now you would manage a place with its various activities. MSP must be very future-oriented." ... complete article here

TWO FILMS I'd like to urge everyone to watch these two short documentary-style films, both around 15 minutes in length. "One of These Mornings" was created by Valery Lyman, a remarkable young film-maker whom I've known since she was a child. The subject is Election Day 2008, when Barack Obama became president of the United States. Valery had asked many friends and acquaintances, including myself, to call her that momentous day and leave messages about how we felt after voting. I think you'll find her combination of images with the voices-of-the-people inspiring. More than a year later, it brought tears to my eyes several times. Click on this link: One of These Mornings.   The other film is an interview with a longtime close friend of mine, Ross Gelbspan, an award-winning journalist who has written two books on climate change ("The Heat Is On" and "Boiling Point.") Ross has been sounding the alarm about the planetary crisis for more fifteen years, and this film with him speaks directly to what we must do to prepare for a very uncertain future. I think you'll find it compelling, sobering, and timely viewing - something we all need to think about, especially in terms of what our children and grandchildren will be facing. Click on this link: The Heat Is Online. - Dick Russell 1/29/10

TESTIMONY OF DICK RUSSELL Author, Striper Wars H796, An Act relative to the conservation of Atlantic striped bass Massachusetts Joint Committee on Environment, Natural Resources & Agriculture January 14, 2010 I thank you for allowing me to testify today on what I believe is an urgent conservation measure, vital to preserving for our children and grand-children the most magnificent fish that swims our near-shore waters. I am an environmental journalist and the author of six books, including one called Striper Wars, about the fish that is the subject of this hearing. And today I hope to offer some historical perspective, along with the reasons why H796 needs to be passed during the current legislative session. Striped bass have been called the aquatic equivalent of the American bald eagle. Without Native Americans having taught the Pilgrims about how to take striped bass, they would not have survived their first difficult winters in the Plymouth Colony. Protection of striped bass was the reason for America’s very first conservation law, in 1639, when the Massachusetts Bay Colony general court ruled they were too valuable to be ground up and used for fertilizer. The first fishery management measures, in 1776, were also drawn up on the striper’s behalf... complete article here

"Don't Start the Revolution without Me" by Jesse Ventura and Dick Russell Vintage Ventura on Display in New Book Jesse Ventura Gets in (another) Last Word CIA Confirms Ventura Meeting Occurred Ventura had it right: CIA was here - Are they still?

Birth of an Island!

• by Dick Russell Recently Posted Sun, the Moon and Walmart, The  5/12 • Gray Whale Migration Story, A  4/11 Annus Horribilis  1/11 Journal of Dreams (interview with the poet Homero Aridjis)  1/11

Published June 23rd, 2005... Dick Russell's latest book: Striper Wars An American Fish Story The remarkable story of how one species was brought back from the brink of extinction – only to face new and even more daunting threats... When populations of striped bass began plummeting in the early 1980s, author and fisherman Dick Russell was there to lead an Atlantic coast conservation campaign that resulted in one of the most remarkable wildlife comebacks in the history of fisheries. As any avid fisherman will tell you, the striped bass has long been a favorite at the American dinner table; in fact, we've been feasting on the fish from the time of the Pilgrims. By 1980 that feasting had turned to overfishing by commercial fishing interests. Striper Wars is Dick Russell's inspiring account of the people and events responsible for the successful preservation of one of America's favorite fish and of what has happened since... Click here for more... hardcover: 288 pages / Island Press – Shearwater Books (June 23, 2005)

Now in Paperback! Eye of the Whale "Once in a while, a book comes along that redefines its subject to the extent that most previous works immediately become obsolete. Eye of the Whale is such a book...it will change the way you think about the natural world." –RICHARD ELLIS, LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK REVIEW Named a Best Book of the Year by three major newspapers upon its initial publication, and now available for the first time in paperback, Eye of the Whale offers an exhilarating blend of adventure and natural history as Dick Russell follows the migration of the gray whale from Mexico's Baja peninsula to the Arctic's Bering Strait. Click here for more... Paperback: 688 pages / Island Press – Shearwater Books (September 20, 2004)

 

The Man Who Knew Too Much The Revised, Updated Trade Paperback Edition of Dick Russell's landmark 1992 book on the Kennedy assassination, "The Man Who Knew Too Much," is now in bookstores nationwide. Introduction by Lachy Hulme Order it here Click here for more...

Dick Russell's Black Genius in paperback In this collection of essays and interviews journalist Dick Russell examines the role of African Americans through two centuries of American history. He focuses primarily on the role of blacks in the cultural life of the United States. Russell writes about notable figures such as educator Mary McLeod Bethune, speaks with Harvard professor Cornel West about W. E. B. Du Bois, and discusses Frederick Douglass and James Baldwin in an essay titled "Timeless Voices, Parallel Realities." Black Genius and the American Experience, with an introduction by Alvin F. Poussaint, takes a thoughtful and fascinating look at the contributions to U.S. history made by Americans of African descent. Amazon.Com Click here for more... Paperback: 497 pages / Carroll & Graf Publishers (February 1, 1999)

 

 

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