The Other Seal Hunt

Stageleft has published a particular nasty racist little email that was sent to some Northern folks, the Inuit. It attacks them for seal hunting.

The Inuit who also are affected by the anti-seal hunt activists they have produced a new pro sustainable development video promoting the Seal Hunt in the North as part of a sustainable fishing/hunting economy.

But of course their video is nothing like the corporate campaign the Green NGO's do because of their deep pockets. Pockets filled annually by the fundraising campaign around the seal hunt.

In 1974 IFAW hired the same advertising agency as Coca-Cola to co-ordinate a $100,000 "Stop the Seal Hunt," campaign. Seal pup products are now banned in Europe and the U.S. Marine Mamal protection Act prevents any importation of seal products into Canada's largest trading partner. With annual revenues of $60 million a year and support from U.S., Canadian and European celebrities, the IFAW represents a publicity juggernaut, Simpson said.

The Reality

The Propaganada Image




Amongst Northern peoples, those in the Circumpolar Arctic, sealing is part of the traditional economy. The Green NGO's like to claim that the Inuit and other aboriginal peoples are simply dupes of the fur industry! The fact that traditional hunter gatherer economies are based on hunting, duh oh, might have something to do with it of course doesn't cross their minds.

This is a morality play about the angst people in the south feel about the North, urban sophisticates living in the metropoles versus the rural rubes and rednecks who live in the Southerners much cherished 'wilderness".

Its people in the south versus Peoples in the North, and by the way the Newfoundland Hunt is in Labrador where it is part of the traditional way of live of the aboriginals who live there as well as the Fisher folk from the Rock.

Its about old economies based on fishing and hunting which are suffering from underdevelopment, but that underdevelopment, is in the eye of the beholder, sustainable fishing and hunting economies can exist. But not for PETA and others who want to end all use of animals so we can become vegans.

Unfortunately the Green moralists believe that the Hunting and Fishing Folk should pay the price for urbanites to wander in a people-less wilderness.

McCartney called the hunt "barbaric" and a "stain" on the country, and urged Ottawa to replace it with subsidies for fishermen and an eco-tourism industry.

It comes from all those cutesy wilderness movies put out by Walt Disney that generations have grown up on. The ones with the anthropomophic animals that talk. Which maybe why Ms.McCartney almost got bit by a baby seal, because she was probably trying to have a conversation with it.

POSED UNPOSED

Tom Hanson, Associated Press

A seal pup tries to nip at Paul McCartney and his wife Heather as she tries to pet it on the ice floes.

Paul McCartney and his wife Heather pose with a seal pup as part of a high-profile publicity stunt.
(CP Tom Hanson)

He and his wife posed for photographers while petting whitecoat pups, which are illegal to target.

And its nice to see someone put the Seal Hunt in context;

Seal hunt pales next to Iraq slaughter: senator

Also See:

Seal Hunt Articles 2006

Seal Hunt Articles 2005:

Green Opportunism

Green Party Seal Hunt Flippers

SEAL HUNT DEJA VU

Did Viagra impact the Seal Hunt

A Rational Observation on the Seal Hunt


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