Ban going to Canukistan: Canada set for mass seal hunting again!

[krsna]

Canada set for mass seal hunting

Previous seal hunts have provoked international outrage

The largest single seal hunt in half a century begins in Canada on Monday.

The government is allowing more than 300,000 seals to be killed this year, many of them in a 36-hour mass cull.

 

The hunting of young seals for their fur almost stopped off Canada's east coast 25 years ago in the face of international outrage.

 

Animal rights groups are hoping to sway international opinion against the hunt, but Canadian officials say it is now both humane and necessary.

 

The seal hunt in Newfoundland and Labrador withered 25 years ago as brutal images of men clubbing infant seals horrified the world.

 

THE CULL

Up to 350,000 baby harp seals to be killed this season

Preliminary culls started at the beginning of April

2,500 men and 150 trawlers to gather for intensive 36-hour phase of cull on 12 April

Up to 10,000 seals to be killed per daylight hour

Killing of "whitecoat" seals - aged up to 12 days - banned

 

 

Seal cull: Your comments

The US banned imports of seal products in 1972 and the EU followed suit a decade later with a ban on white pelt imports, taken from the youngest babies.

 

As a result, the Canadian government reduced quotas for seal hunting to as low as 15,000 annually - mainly for meat and local handicraft.

 

But with fur again in fashion the hunt is back.

 

Last year Canada increased the quotas again, allowing a million seals to be killed over the next three years.

 

It is now being conducted under tighter regulations and most seals are now shot, not clubbed, but the number of animals expected to be taken this year will be the highest in decades and once again it is drawing international attention.

 

Hard to convince

 

At the weekend, Canadian Natural Resources Minister John Efford said many claims made overseas about the hunt are simply wrong.

 

He says the hunt is more humane than ever while the seal population is exploding and commercial fish stocks in the region are vanishing.

 

But the BBC's Ian Gunn in Vancouver, Canada, says against images of dying seals that can be a hard argument to make convincing.

 

The Canadian tourism commission admitted last week they are keeping an eye open for an international backlash should the protests gather strength.

 

Officials estimate there are 5.2 million harp seals in the north Atlantic currently.

 

Guidelines 'ignored'

 

Far from being endangered, the seals are responsible for the depletion of cod stocks, they say.

 

Society girl Paris Hilton joins the campaign

Animal rights groups accuse officials of "attempting to scapegoat seals" for their own fisheries mismanagement.

 

The International Fund for Animal Welfare (Ifaw) also says government guidelines on humane hunting methods are being ignored.

 

"We filmed and witnessed seals being skinned alive right in front of us," Ifaw activist Rebecca Aldworth told Reuters news agency last week.

 

"We saw live seals being dragged while conscious across the ice with boat hooks, we saw stockpiles of dead and dying seals, it was really horrific."

 

Another group, the US-based Humane Society, is taking full-page adverts in prominent American newspapers to urge for a travel boycott on Canada.

 

They also designed shirts reading "Club Sandwiches Not Seals".

[theist]

We can speak out against this barbarity. I like to add one line alluding to the fact that animals have souls. The real solution as we know is on the spiritual side.

 

Basically I just copy the relevant portions written by PeTA and add a couple lines myself. It helps. Sometimes I receive a response from an embassy or some governmental secretary. When they get thousands of these from PeTA they are forced to confront the issue. They won't otherwise.

 

____________________________

 

Stop Barbaric Seal Slaughter

 

 

The largest slaughter of marine mammals in the world begins this month, right off the East Coast of Canada: the Canadian seal hunt. During this barbaric hunt, the seals, including young pups only 2 weeks old, are beaten with clubs, shot, impaled on hooks, and even skinned alive for their fur. This abuse is well documented: An independent veterinary report in 2001 found that in 40 percent of the kills, a sealer had to strike the seal a second time. When the veterinarians examined the skulls of killed seals, 42 percent were found to have minimal or no fractures, suggesting a high probability that these seals were conscious when skinned. Now the fisheries minister has increased the number of seals allowed to be killed starting in 2003 to more than 1,000,000 over the next three years!

 

Please send polite but very firm letters asking the fisheries minister to decrease the allowable seal kill so that increased numbers of seals do not suffer this agony. Please also ask him to strengthen the marine mammal regulations currently under review to include the method by which these animals are hunted and to ensure that these regulations are strictly enforced:

 

The Honourable Geoff Regan

Minister of Fisheries and Oceans Canada

House of Commons

Parliament Buildings, Wellington Street

Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0A6

Canada

min@dfo-mpo.gc.ca

 

Please also send letters asking the prime minister to pass legislation banning seal hunting entirely in Canada:

 

Right Honorable Paul Martin

Prime Minister

House of Commons

Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0A6

Canada

pm@pm.gc.ca

 

[krsna]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4406665.stm

[Guest guest]

anyone who hunts seals is beyond cruel they are inhumane. hw could anyone hunt seals? they are so cute!

[Guest guest]

No, cruelty is not the problem with our friends from the north.

 

Seals get blamed for salmon shortages in Puget Sound. But the whales dont come anymore to eat the seals, and they dont come because of Trident Submarines. Culling is not necessarily cruel, the ksatriya culled the forests to hone their military skills. Overpopulation by a species is a problem, but this happens from reasons seldon thought of (like the case of navy ships operating sonar and ELF units creating the actual imbalance). Seals are so cute, but if culling is used to control other damages, what can be done?

 

Its the human culling that Im concerned about, if the whale huggers had sympathy for the unborn humans or the dying masses of Africa, and Asia, then maybe Id cut PETA some slack. But they could care less about humans being brutally slaughtered in the aboratoriums, so I could care less about theit pet (excuse the pun) issues.

 

mahak

[theist]

And it's the Humane Society that is out front on this one not PeTA. Although PeTA is on it too.

 

Over 95,000 seals including babies have been clubbed to death or killed by other means by these barbaric savages in the last two weeks.

 

For the news on it with updates visit:

 

http://www.protectseals.org/

 

[Gauracandra]

Think of what your mentality must be to actually club a seal. You pick up a bat, you sneak up behind this fat, waddling creature with big watery eyes, and then 'WHACK' the animal squeels, 'WHACK WHACK WHACK'. You see those cute watery eyes bludgeoned to death.

 

Just look at this photo below. How could you even consider it?

 

But this brings me to something fundamental. I've always found it very perplexing the reaction I get when I tell people I'm vegetarian. They are always horrified. Their reaction is so extreme at times that I've concluded that one a certain level they must feel I'm insulting them just by my existence.

 

But if you pass the meat counter at a grocery store, just look at it physically. Forget the pain of the animal for a second. Just look at it visually. Its splotchy blood, pasty colors, veins popping out. It is visually gross. Yet no one seems to notice this.

 

The more covered we become the less we can experience subtlety. Something so gross is seen as normal. Is it any wonder they don't care about clubbing a cute seal? The only reason there is some protest is because seals are cute. Unfortunately, many meat eaters who are against clubbing seals don't think anything wrong with killing cows. But atleast its a start.

 

A side issue. One thing that fries me more than anything are pro-choice vegetarians. When I see "Save the Whale" bumper stickers next to a "Pro-Choice" bumper sticker, I almost slap my head in disbelief. Anyways, thats a side issue.

[krsna]

 

/images/graemlins/blush.gif

 

Why club a poor seal to death? You want his skin for money's sake. You don't care about the 'karma' that you will incur for killing a poor defenseless creature? /images/graemlins/blush.gif

[krsna]

Srila Prabhupada Speaks Out

 

On the Root Causes of War

 

"You are killing innocent cows and animals. Nature will take revenge. Wait for that. As soon as the time is ripe, the nature will gather all these rascals, and club, slaughter them. Finished. They will fight amongst themselves, Protestant and Catholic, Russian and France, and France and Germany. This is going on. Why? This is the nature's law. Tit for tat. You have killed. Now you become killed"

(Conversation 6/11/74)

 

We find in modern warfare that attacks are made upon innocent citizens who are without fault. According to the law of Manu, such warfare is a most sinful activity. Furthermore, at the present moment civilized nations are unnecessarily maintaining many slaughterhouses for killing innocent animals. When a nation is attacked by its enemies, the wholesale slaughter of the citizens should be taken as a reaction to their own sinful activities. That is nature's law.

(Srimad Bhagavatam 4.11.7)

 

In this age of Kali the propensity for mercy is almost nil. Consequently there is always fighting and wars between men and nations. Men do not understand that because they unrestrictedly kill so many animals, they also must be slaughtered like animals in big wars. This is very much evident in the Western countries. In the West, slaughterhouses are maintained without restriction, and therefore every fifth or tenth year there is a big war in which countless people are slaughtered even more cruelly than the animals. Sometimes during war, soldiers keep their enemies in concentration camps and kill them in very cruel ways. These are reactions brought about by unrestricted animal-killing in the slaughterhouse and by hunters in the forest. Proud, demoniac persons do not know the laws of nature, or the laws of God. Consequently, they unrestrictedly kill poor animals, not caring for them at all. This Krsna consciousness movement is the only means by which the sinful activities of men in this Kali-yuga can be counteracted.

(Srimad Bhagavatam 4.26.5)

 

 

In Kali Yuga - The Age of Ignorance

Vedic Knowledge Sheds Light On the World

Bhagavad Gita As It Is

 

"Following such conclusions, the demoniac, who are lost to themselves and who have no intelligence, engage in unbeneficial, horrible works meant to destroy the world."

TEXT 16.9

 

The demoniac are engaged in activities that will lead the world to destruction. The Lord states here that they are less intelligent. The materialists, who have no concept of God, think that they are advancing. But, according to Bhagavad-gita, they are unintelligent and devoid of all sense. They try to enjoy this material world to the utmost limit and therefore always engage in inventing something for sense gratification. Such materialistic inventions are considered to be advancement of human civilization, but the result is that people grow more and more violent and more and morecruel, cruel to animals and cruel to other human beings. They have no idea how to behave toward one another. Animal killing is very prominent amongst demoniac people. Such people are considered the enemies of the world because ultimately they will invent or create something which will bring destruction to all. Indirectly, this verse anticipates the invention of nuclear weapons, of which the whole world today is very proud. At any moment war may take place, and these atomic weapons may create havoc. Such things are created solely for the destruction of the world, and this is indicated here. Due to godlessness, such weapons are invented in human society; they are not meant for the peace and prosperity of the world.

 

 

[theist]

 

A side issue. One thing that fries me more than anything are pro-choice vegetarians. When I see "Save the Whale" bumper stickers next to a "Pro-Choice" bumper sticker, I almost slap my head in disbelief. Anyways, thats a side issue.

 

 

On beliefnet I go to the animal rights board and the abortion debate boards. I see the same people who strongly argue for animal rights also strongly argue for the woman's so-called right to chose. And I see the strong pro-life advocates as far as humans go coming to the animal rights board and mocking those who want to protect the lives of animals. It's really crazy.

 

Just place a picture of a fetus in the womb sucking it's thumb next to a big eyed baby seal. Who could kill either one?

[krsna]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3846525.stm