I'm powerless and I don't believe that any of my writings are going to change your mind. But you people need to be fully conscious of the problem at hand and the problematic nature of your beliefs and actions. I know that there is a particularly severe communication issue between our groups because of the language barrier and because your collective mostly use Vk instead of FB. I'm confident that russian friends will accurately translate my message to the concerned third parties. So, here's the thing : A) You're actively collaborating with actors of the dolphinarium industry. There has been at my knowledge at least two separate cases of dolphinarium owning companies suing smaller competing facilities in order to confiscate captives with the explicit help of your group of activists. You people are literally helping dolphinarium owning companies expand. Why ? Because their pens are two meters longer ? Because at least the water isn't chlorinated ? Let remind ourselves that the "rescue" of the two circus dolphins by a dolphinarium company you assisted to were ended in a DAT facility in west crimea (the Stepnaya Gavan delphinariy) in (according to google maps at least) a 22x22m main/show pen and a 10x22 hospital pen. And that Zeus (and arguably Delfa too), the two dolphins you also assisted in the "rescue", died (in something like a 5x5m pen) because Ludmila Kamaeva, the owner of the Utrish dolphinarium, never accepted to release him despite the fact that he was economically unviable, that (flawed, still) alternate propositions by local scientists for his release were given, that efforts were made by some of you to convince her, let alone the pleads from international organizations such as Born Free. Let's face reality here : collaborating with the dolphinarium industry is not only contradictory and ethically unacceptable, but doomed to fail in any case. We should follow the oppressed, not the oppressors.
This isn't a new thing : this is actually one of the main problems with the current "mainstream" international/anglo-speaking activism (especially on the Marino/Visser/WSP side, but not only them), which has no qualm in explicitly collaborating with what were (and should, by all logic) be their enemies, and actually giving room to what appear as a recycled dolphinarium industry with a greenwashed touch. So again, I'm not blaming you as individuals, but I'm blaming you as an organized group and system.
I also remarked that some of you were close or had some involvement with Richard O'barry. Now (and admittedly by contrast with some people on our group) I am not as hostile to Ric's views and actions as I am to people like Marino or Foster. Ric is actually the only "founder" (alongside Ken) which accurately understood that ex-captive were acting as neurotics, that one didn't had to "train" them, and at least on the paper went beyond the behaviorist bullshit that permeates most trainers mind. But he's still a paternalist which is unfortunately stuck in old ways and thoughts. He's adamant in keeping ex-captives in pens, he's a staunch pro-sanctuary. In fact he currently seek to build one in Italy - I made a short article showing the problematic aspects of his project (he wants to use fish pens, the project clearly seeks to be at least partially commercial/touristic in nature...). You can do better than Ric and go beyond those primitive ways. B) You're denying the right of the concerned for autonomy and a political recognition. Cetaceans aren't "wild animals" "domesticated animals" "magnificent creatures" which sight need to be "enjoyed", "the adornment of the sea" (yes, I read that one), or "cute precious sea angels" to coo and baby talk to. They're people, and that notion has very specific implications, namely that 1) their right of autonomy as individuals and as a people needs to be acknowledged : this is the basic right for self-determination 2) The territories and resources they occupy and use should be recognized as primarily theirs and 3) The problem must be understood as a social and political one. We're talking of a people exploiting another people inside of a specific material and historical context. If you chose to continue the ownership and control of these people by building, funding and ruling these new "rehab centers", "sanctuaries" or else, you become the oppressors. I for one am on the side of the oppressed, not of the oppressor, and I consider this as a fight for the self determination and integrity of a people. If you chose the wrong path, I will have to fight you as I do against the dolphinarium industry as a whole.
Let's remind us that this particular population - the black sea ponticus dolphins - is not only subjected of systematized captures and large scale enslavement all over Russia and Ukraine since four decades, but according to this paper : "During the 20th century, the number of cetaceans killed in the former Russian Empire and later the USSR undoubtedly exceeded 1.5 million animals, including all three species, while other Black Sea states together probably killed about four to five million", all this in order to manufacture oil, meat, leather and fertilizer. I seriously think that we owe them something as a people, and what we owe them is surely not the denial of their right for self-determination and their re-enslavement with nicer terms with the complicity of their former oppressors. As for the whole concept of sanctuaries, learn again from history : in many places and time societies planned the systematized institutionalisation of specific categories of oppressed people in order to separate them from society and/or in the name of "care" and "love" : psych wards, retirement homes, magdalene sisters asylums, leper colonies, workhouses etc. Our western and colonial history is littered with such instances. Those were already well theorized by the likes of Michel Foucault and Erving Goffman : total institutions where one is to be endlessly surveilled and controlled, disciplined and punished. If you think this is what ex-captive deserve, you need to read more and take lessons from our collective cultural past. C) Have at least the decency to listen to the concerned first. You're not the concerned. You're - as we all are here as humans - in a position of power over the captives, factually and materially speaking. As human beings you can capture them, handle them, displace them, starve them to death until submission and so on. Our laws and customs perceive this as totally normal and acceptable. They can't fight back. But they can speak, we know that. And we also know how to speak to them. Andrew's friend Vladimiras is currently building up a device that could theoretically help us communicating with those black sea tursiops populations, through a method that was already well theorized by our predecessors (cue to Russell, Ken Levasseur and Vlad Markov's work here). You could join their efforts toward contact or build your own device (something I'm already trying to do on my side in France). Now, what about this : you hold on your projects, you join us in our efforts to contact the very concerned in Crimea and the Krasnodar region, and then, according to what THEY have to say, propose or demand, we act. Our actions would depend of their orders, their exigences, their rules. That would be actually meaningful and important, instead of pursuing some grandiloquent project of a "sanctuary" that amounts to nothing but another form of institutionalisation, with all the injustice and cruelty it implies, no matter how much "care and love" you pour into it. In other words, why putting all your effort and money into building a sanctuary when you could simply join us in building a simple machine and actually act upon what they have to tell us ? And for the most stubborn among you, the one that insist that they pursue such projects because they "feel" this is the best thing to do, despite all the evidences at hand showing the contrary : It should occur to you that maybe you're biased because you're actual human beings in a position of power over cetaceans, raised in a society which understands cetaceans as wild animals or chattel to own and handle, and more generally non-human species as ownable property, and that you have no right to enforce confinement and command on as well as decide of the faith and destiny of an actual people in the name of spontaneous assumptions and fears that are mostly here to justify a search for power, ego and careerism. At least, remind yourselves of your own national history : I believe that the idea of "replacing the old oppressive system with a slightly different oppressive system showing itself as the panacea of freedom and equality" is something you're forebears were familiar with. I did from mine - if there's something that french colonialism taught me, is how easy it is to legitimate oppression with the best of intentions at hand, sugarcoated paternalism, and a good load of internalized hypocrisy and denial. I don't blame you, I blame our societies. But please learn about the mistakes of the past and take responsibility for it. We can chose to become their allies and friends instead of their oppressors, if we take the path of self-criticism, decency and maturity instead of the one of self-interest and ego.
