Blood on Ice, Illiterate Newfoundlanders pick up your clubs - Seal Slaughter by Martha Rosenberg

[Annces]

There's another reason to lament Arctic ice melting; as soon as floes break up off the shores of Labrador and Newfoundland, fleets of Canadian seal killers will arrive to initiate the largest marine mammal hunt in the world.

275,000 seals will be killed in the annual bloodletting--up from 270,00 last year--and 98 percent of them are babies.



This year, Canada wants no trouble.

It has banned ships belonging to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, whose Canadian citizen founder Captain Paul Watson, has protested the hunt for 30 years, from its waters.

"If this order is not complied with you will be subject to prosecution under Canadian law," Lawrence Cannon, Canada's Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities told the marine mammal defenders through a fax.

"Do your worst Mr. Minister," replied Watson. "If we are ready to risk our lives on the high seas to defend marine wildlife, the fear of imprisonment is hardly a deterrent. The seal hunt is a perverse abomination that has no place in the civilized world and certainly no place in Canada in the 21st century."

Atlantic Canada sealers constitute only one percent of the population yet are highly subsidized by the government, says Sea Shepherd. Besides paying for regulation, market research and public relations, the government provides ice breaker ships, search and rescue operations and surveillance help in locating the seal herds themselves. Nice subsidies, if you can get them.

The biggest seal product junkies are Norway, Russia, Eastern Europe, Japan and China where seal penis is also used as a "cure" for impotence.

There's also a hot market for seal oil sold by companies like Barry Group, Inc. and Costco as a health supplement despite its high PCB, mercury, arsenic, and DDT content says Sea Shepherd.

And don't forget seal fur using "luxury" fashion houses Prada, Dolce & Gabbana, Gucci and Versace who don't mind the clubbing of baby mammals if the price is right.

full article
http://www.counterpunch.org/rosenberg03262008.html

[flvegan]

1. Someone please tell Loyola Hearn to go fuck himself.

Go ahead and try to arrest the Farley Mowat. Have at it. Give Sea Shepherd and your abominable bullshit "hunt" worldwide media coverage. Oh, and then...prosecute it. Put it on trial for the world to see even more.

Ignorant bastards the lot of 'em.

Stay safe, SSCS. Some of those fishermen (who play sealer for a short while...gotta wipe out as much competition as you can) are nothing but proven thugs that will resort to violence. Video everything, from every angle.

[Catherina]

2. I just read the story at Common Dreams

This is horrendous!



:cry: