I don't want to get anyone's back up about this, but I wondered if anyone had any opinions about it?

I am of course about it and there follows some info that I hope isn't too biased? I have tried to consider everything and would like to spread the word...

A baby seal can be legally killed once it molts its white fur, which usually begins at about 12 days of age, bludgeoned with a club.

Seals are routinely CLUBBED or shot and left to suffer on the ice, then dragged over the sides of boats with sharpened metal hooks AND SKINNED ALIVE.

Most of the harp seal carcasses (including the meat) are simply abandoned on the ice. This isnt killing for food or survival, its killing for fashion.

The only economically valuable parts of the seal are the pelts of defenseless seal pups, a non-essential luxury product no one really needs.

Fully 95% of the harp seals killed over the past five years have been under three months of age. At the time of slaughter, many of these defenseless pups had not yet eaten their first solid food or taken their first swimthey literally had NO ESCAPE from the "hunters."

Best thing u can do IS SPREAD THE WORD AN DISCUSS IT! Especially with members of countries who still buy the pelts. Norway and Canada of course.

Boycott not only Newfoundland and Labrador tourism, but that of PEI, and let merchants know you are doing so. Spread this message far and wide! They are clearly sensitive to the issue. Go to:

http://www.touringnewfoundland.com/thingstodo.html .

More to do:
Send the big companies a little note.
There are many companies who haven't signed the pledge yet. Ask them to do so by emailing their corporate offices.

Have a chat with your local restaurants and business owners.
Encourage them to join the boycott by educating them using our boycott pocket guide, then asking them to fill out the pledge for businesses.

Put the seal hunt on Labour's agenda


You can help put the seal hunt on the political
agenda. (http://www.kintera.org/TR.asp?ID=M72...41898140108065)

PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION! AND PASS THE WORD!
Sign:
www.thepetitionsite.co.uk

The seal hunt is disgusting.

I'm sending an email to one of the businesses from the first link. The other two aren't working for me.

'Get anyone's back up about this'?

If anybody supports barbarism and abject cruelty like this, they have no humanity or compassion and deserve to be clubbed to death themselves

It just makes me want to be SICK. Grown men and women attacking and murdering defenceless animals, just cos they CAN and as if making an innocent, beautiful creature - as capable of feeling pain and distress as you and I - suffer beyond comprehension and die miserable, TERRIFIED and in agony is no fucking BIGGIE?

Some people who can put these things far better than I can:

"The question is not 'can (animals) reason?' nor 'can they talk?' but rather 'can they SUFFER?'" - Jeremy Bentham

"To a man whose mind is free there is something even more intolerable in the sufferings of animals than in the sufferings of man. For with the latter it is at least admitted that suffering is evil and that the man who causes it is a criminal. But thousands of animals are uselessly butchered every day without a shadow of remorse. If any man were to refer to it, he would be thought ridiculous. And that is the unpardonable crime." - Romain Rolland, Nobel Prize 1915

"When it comes to having a central nervous system, and the ability to feel pain, hunger, and thirst, a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy." - Ingrid Newkirk

"We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form." - William Ralph Inge

That last quote about sums it up. Humans are vile trash. The worst species to have ever "graced" this planet, by a long shot.

How is this fucking legal is what I want to know? The fact that it is speaks volumes about the demented sick fucks we live among.

We're the epitome of evil.

That's disgusting.

From going to a museum in Norway about the polar regions, I can tell you that baby seals aren't just humbly clubbed. Its a three stage process, using a hammer thing that is spikey at one end and blunt at the other. You drive the spike into the back of the head, then use the spike to cut the flipper arteries so it bleeds to death. Then you bash in the skull with the blunt end.

Despite being vegetarian, I do tend to see that there is a need to cull some animals. But I really can't condone the level of brutality involved in this. What's wrong with the humble gun?

I gotta spread it around....but yeah, exactly what you said.

That's the firts time I put the prefix 'Get anyone's back up' about the post. Some people get really wound up by me posting about it....tis pathetic.

Labour agenda link that works
http://www.labourspace.com/vote.php?...y&auid=2309161

3 petitions:
http://www.stopthesealhunt.ca/site/a...PFIqE&b=453621

http://www.petitionspot.com/petition...Hunt-in-Canada

http://www.stopthesealhunt.ca/site/a...PFIqE&b=453621

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takea...ltl=1173796665
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Get flyers from ifaw, jsut email em.
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I don't think this alone is enough tho as I'm not sure if these petitions get sent off. One has been goign for years and may jsut be for awareness not political change.

The best thing to do is spread the word and convine and make people aware of the situation especially in countires that support the hunt liek canand and Norway (I think).
x

BTW:

yippee, my favourite time of year again

I don't know, but this is in your country, right? So maybe you could voice your protest to your govt. and it might make a difference?

__________________

If it is legal in your country or your country approves of it and u don't, u have the right to say and it really does make a difference, thigns have even changed since last year already.
A european ban is almost sorted!

the only way it will stop if people stop buying furs...

a lot of the information is bias, they don't just leave the meat there, doing nothing, Inuit people use the remaining parts of the seal for food and oils.

and there are a lot of rules in place saying that they animal is dead before they can skin it, as well as minimum calibers for the guns and min and max sizes for the mallets they can use.

i'm not defending it, but...i'm just saying.

Well then at the very least it's nice to know what's left of the poor seals is used & not left to rot.

I just can't comprehend a fellow human can go up to something so precious and start beating it, it's just beyond me. And for a fucking coat! I can only hope there is a hell for such "people".

Agreed. Absolutely. I can't quite decide whether it utterly breaks my heart or makes this incredible anger rise up inside me. BOTH, I think.

There is no need, no reason, no excuse for this kind of behaviour and nothing justifies it or makes it "less bad". I don't think the seal who died confused, scared and in excruciating pain cares how economical inuits are with its remains and neither do I. Treating other living creatures like this needs to be outlawed, like, now. Can you even believe it's the year 2007 and there are still morons out there who think this kind of barbarism is okay? Or rather, ignore the fact that it's patently NOT okay because they can get away with it and because they're getting something out of it. Imagine that. How can they sleep at night? I wish these unspeakably awful people nothing but the very worst.

Actually, speaking to a friend who worked in an area where they club seals, it's the only way a lot of these people in remote areas make a livelihood. They can earn thousands just this one time of the year...I don't know. No one likes to see dead seals, but people have to live. Conservation/awareness does not work if all factors aren't considered.

__________________
"We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard-working, very patriotic, very pro-America areas of this great nation," she told the crowd.

I don't care! Some people make their livelihoods through drug dealing and people trafficking, do you think they should be left alone to get on with it because 'people have to live'?

You're being very unreasonable. You wouldn't be a good at conservation. It only works when people's needs are met...not so wildly disregarded.

__________________
"We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard-working, very patriotic, very pro-America areas of this great nation," she told the crowd.

People can move. They weren't sentenced to such a life. This is a choice.

& well, I'd rather starve than resort to such behavior.


(Nothing personal to you/your comment, Pablita)