Thursday, March 02, 2006
Heartbreaking seal hunt
I know that no one else cares about this but me, but here's another link to an article about Paul McCartney visiting the seals. They had to look long and hard to find an ice floe large enough and hard enough to land their helicopter on. Also a large prtion of the seals had to give birth on islands instead of on the safety of the ice (see my earlier post on the subject). Why don't they go after the polluters causing climate change and endangering seal populations rather than going after people who are just trying to make a living off of hunting or living off the land, or even just enjoy clubbing babies to death - because causing the extinction of hundreds or thousands of species through climate change is a much greater transgression in my opinion?
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Wheres the link, and before I go there, are there any heartbreaking pictures of dead seals? I dont want to see that.
Click the title of the blog for the link, there aren't any pictures.
Uhhh...that's so sad....
Just becuase the seal population is triple what it was in the 70's doesnt mean that its okay to kill them now. I've seen those videos. They arent humane about it.
Bah! I feel like I'm talkin to a wall. Have you seen any of the videos of how they kill chickens - miss chicken eater? No! because it never makes the news because they only show seals. What's the difference between a seal that was free and some hunter jumps out and clubs it over the head on day and a chicken that has to live up to it's wings in shit it's entire life with it's beak cut off to it can't damage the other chickens totally over crowded and diseased? Well the chicken get's strung up by it's feet and run through a decapitation machine, and the seal gets bonked on the head - so the big diffence is that the seal was free for the entirity of it's life and the chicken was living in squalor.
I'm not saying that we should kill seals, I'm saying that it's such a minor issue compared to important things going on, like animals becoming extinct and factory farming.
I think seal hunting for me, is like bears in politics for you.
Actually...Jennifer...YES, I HAVE seen those movies on how they kill chickens. They arent humane about it either, clipping their beaks off...HOWEVER, I dont eat seals. And chickens arent as cute. LOL...
Joking, before you jump all over me.
I know that how they kill any animal isnt humane, HOWEVER, the reason that I dont eat red meat, or pork, is because of the TASTE. Not because of the ethics...Thats ashley. Maybe you got us confused. =)
Firstly, I never mentioned red meat or pork. What I'm saying is that you are *financially* supporting the inhumane treatment of chickens while paying BS lip-service to not supporting killing harp seals. And I think that you hit on a pretty big kernel of truth with your comment about chickens not being cute. It's easy to whine about cute animals getting killed, but what about some endnagered slug - no one gives a shit about that. Or what about global warming/climate change that will drive thousands or tens of thousands of species to extinction? A brave move would be for Sir Paul to say get out of your cars! Invest in public transit! Ratify the Kyoto accord! Ban factory farming! But instead of going after the rich fat-cats in industry he's going after some unemployed Newfies and Native Canadians who can't hire spin doctors to prove that what they are doing is somehow humane and good to the environment, the way Shell Oil does.
Do you see why this pisses me off?
I DO see...you're saying all or nothing. You cant protest one issue, and ignore the others. Slugs are just as important as seals. Got it.
I don't know if it should be all or nothing, I think everyone should focus on issues that interest them and issues that are important. It's hard for most people to be focused on the enormity of everything that's wrong with the world today, so it helps sometimes to pick an issue that you feel strongly about. But when you're doing that, you should try to pick one that's important and keep the big picture in mind. For instance, environmentalism is hard without social justice. Take my favourite issue - Mountain Gorillas. Rwanda one of the few countries the gorillas live in is one of the most densely populated countries in the world. People have tiny farms (not even farms, gardens) and houses. Every time a plot of land gets passed down it's divided evenly between all the children, so the plots gets smaller and smaller till you just can't grow enough food off them to feed yourself any more. Now there's this national park that has good land and clean water and mountain gorillas. Well, if you have a grade two education and no money and you're just trying to get by, you probably don't give a shit about biodiveristy, so you probably don't get why you can't live in the park. You probably don't understand that without the trees in the park a landslide will take out your entire garden and you. That without the park there won't be sufficient drainage of mountain rains for you to water your garden further down the side of the mountain.
As a north American, it would be easy for me to say, well, there's no risk of humans becoming extinct, so fuck them, we should put barbed wire on that park's boundaries and shoot everyone found inside the park who isn't supposed to be there. These are the only 500 of these animals anywhere in the world, poor people are a dime a dozen.
Here's where the social justice comes in. What if the people got some revenues from the tourists the park and the gorillas bring in. What if that money was not only spread around, but also used for education programs about the importance of the Gorillas, about birth control. How about some sort of loan program where people could get small loans to go to school or start businesses. Maybe then people would see that Gorilla habitat benefits them too.
I imagine that if seal meat was so tasty, it would have become a fad at some point. Has anyone eaten seal? Is it tasty?
I know their coats make excellent winter clothes, but there are a finite number of people in the world who need a pair of seal skin pants, and I'm not one of them.
The people who hunt this meat aren't doing it for some multinational company, it's cold out on those ice floes, most of them would rather get food on the table some other way if there was something that was easier.
Therefore, why not take on the underlying issues, like unemployment in the maritimes, or take on the larger issue, like the global warming that's seriously threatening the seal population, much more than a handful of hunters.
You feel that this is an attack on Canadians. It is not.
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