This is a message to all the wannabe anti-sealing activists on Youtube : You are being used !
You are not the first person to have posted those pictures and the statements provided to you by these anti-sealing groups.
You may have added some dramatic music and edited it differently but it’s the same content and same message, none of which was actually created by you.
You are therefore spamming Youtube on behalf of groups that solicit funds, some of which stifle free speech by having videos removed for using the very same pictures you did simply because the authors of those videos questioned their motives.
Are you a clone ? No. So why are you posting videos that are a dime a dozen, that will be buried in thousands of similar slide show presentations ?
I certainly hope it’s not to get views because you’ll only get a few repeat views from the same commentators for a short amount of time, until another anti-sealing video containing the same pictures and statements is uploaded by someone else.
Seriously, the reason there are so many videos on the subject is because they’re easily produced, not because it’s a popular topic on Youtube. There is no overwhelming support for these groups on Youtube, especially terrorist groups like Sea Shepherd, the ALF/ELF and their supporters.
If you’re not a sealer, not in the sealing/fur industry and not related to a sealer or someone in the sealing/fur industries, then why are you so interested in this issue ?
The issue is not so black and white as to require me to be a sealer or whatever to be interested in the issue. Most of the activists i’ve encountered are not in IFAW, the HSUS or Sea Shepherd, or employed by them yet they discuss the issue.
Why aren’t you making videos on this issue on your Youtube channel ?
I didn’t create the channel for that purpose and this blog pretty much explains my positions anyway. There are also plenty of videos on Youtube that say what I would say so I just link and favorite those instead.
You have animal videos on your Youtube channel. How can you support the seal hunt ?
Militant vegans ask a similar question of those that eat meat and have animal videos. And quite frankly, this is a ridiculous question.
People cannot just be classified and their opinions on one issue do not necessarily result in specific opinions on similar issues.
For example, there are plenty of vegetarians and vegans out there that don’t support PETA and many PETA supporters are meat eaters or not vegan.
There are plenty of animal lovers that believe this hunt is acceptable, including veterinarians and groups like the World Wildlife Federation and the International Union for Conservation of Nature. As there are plenty of animal lovers out there that hunt and eat meat.
Why have you posted comments on multiple videos about this issue ?
That is the purpose of Youtube ; To find videos you’re interested in and to comment on them. I’ve posted thousands of comments since 2006 on videos on numerous subject.
I find this question odd because Youtube clearly defined what is and isn’t acceptable behavior in their community guidelines and terms of service, something that is easily accessible and should have been read when joining Youtube.
But then some of these activists openly violate these guidelines by posting hateful, racist statement and copying & pasting the same comments repetitively in videos of another topic.
Double standards and hypocrisy appear to be prominent in the anti-sealing activism found on Youtube.
There needs to be some perspective in regards to what humans do that is a threat to animal life.
There are currently over 8 million harp seals in the world, 5.6 million of which is in Canada, and 1.4 million of them are born every year according to the IUCN.
Every year less than half of the 1.4 million new seals are killed so this hunt is clearly no threat to the species. But there is one thing that clearly threatens this species – Plastic !
Marine mammals like the harp seal and whales are threatened by plastics that trickle down to the oceans from the rivers and lakes and pool in the oceans.
Like dolphins, seals are known to play with this toxic material, that they think is seaweed and swallow. And if they don’t happen to find plastic to play with, it can be found in their food – Fish that have taken bites out of floating plastic bags.
This plastic is not digested. It obstructs the digestive tract causing disease and premature death in these animals and their food supply.
This waste is not going away. It is simply breaking down in smaller particles. And more of it reaches the oceans every day.
This was the primary reason why I chose to use cloth bags years back instead of plastic for my groceries. I rarely use plastic bags and plastic water bottles now and when I do, they are recycled.
I have no delusions though in regards to the problem though. People still bring plastic bags and bottles to the beach and still don’t recycle these items. So this problem will get worse before it gets better.
Today people will be turning off their lights for one hour, in support of Earth Hour. But I will not be participating because I don’t need to ; I’ve already replaced most of my incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent and LED lights.
Unfortunately I have these bathroom light fixtures that don’t have compatible CFL or LED lights so I wasn’t able to go 100%. But I still only use four out of the eight lights in those rooms and have LED night lights that provide enough light for some bathroom tasks.
I also use LED night lights in my kitchen and don’t need to turn on the main light to just grab something from the fridge or have a glass of water at night. These of course turn off automatically when the sunlight comes in during the day.
I will also be slowly replacing some of my compact fluorescent lights with more LEDs, which are way more efficient.
Apparently some of the anti-sealing activists on Youtube believe that they can use that word and it magically causes facts to disappear and people to quiver when it’s mentioned.
Another apparently magic phrase they use is “ad hominem” ; They believe that if they’re the first to mention those words that their ad hominem attacks also magically disappear.
I’m always surprised when people try to argue against the swimming reflex. Everyone recognizes this postmortem reaction, even IFAW, though IFAW appeared to think we should think we should assume that it doesn’t occur in the majority of cases, for some reason that they failed to specify in the March 2001 report.
In regards to the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association, the stated the following in their September 2002 report : ‘One issue of contention has been the swimming reflex. When killed by acute trauma to the brain, harp seals, like other animals, often undergo a period of tremors or convulsions. These consist of strong lateral movements of the caudal portion of the body, described as swimming reflex (hereafter referred to as reflex movements), which have been interpreted by some animal welfare advocates as implying persistence of conscious life.‘
Postmortem spasms or twitching has also been observed in humans.
The federal government cut the GST and now the Ontario government will eat up the expected savings as soon as July 2010, when they merge the Provincial Sales Tax and Goods & Services Tax into a Harmonized Sales tax.
This means that Ontario residents will be paying more on fuel, home heating, electricity, and various other services they only paid GST on. That’s an 8% hike.
There will be of course a few exemptions, some of which are listed here, and there will be rebates, thought the rebates will not likely be that significant :
Up to $1000 for families earning up to $160,000
$300 for single individuals earning up to $80,000
These will be divided into three payments, issued in June 2010, November or December 2010 and June 2011. (source)
Then there’s the Electronics Recycling Fee which will kick on on April 1st this year, which will result in fees on electronics sold in Ontario.
A new TV will cost $10 more and computers will cost upwards of $30 more. Why ? Because municipalities and businesses are equipped to recycle them. But whether it will actually keep this electronics waste from being exported to the third world is unknown.
The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society was clearly defined as an eco-terrorist group by the FBI in a 2002 report yet Lush Cosmetics have decided to co-brand themselves with this group.
On their web site you will find yet another appeal to pester the Canadian Prime Minister on behalf of the special interest groups that capitalize on this non-issue, which of course includes the atypical half truths from Sea Shepherd. And you will also find products on which a Sea Shepherd pirate logo can be found.
Lush Cosmetics have obviously been mislead from the information given on the site : “A post mortem survey has shown that 42% of seal pups are skinned alive (about 95% of the seals slaughtered are babies less than 4 weeks old).“
The “post mortem survey” in question is of course the March 2001 report organized, edited and published by IFAW, that i’ve previously mentioned here.
For those that don’t know, 76 seal skulls were examined for this survey for fractures to determine the possible consciousness of these animals and this was their determination :
“Craniums with no apparent fractures would be highly un-probable to be associated with a level of unconsciousness. Furthermore, it would be of significant question if any alteration in consciousness occurred in these cases. These cases equate to 17 % of cases examined.“
“Minimal fractures including hairline or non-displaced fractures could be associated with a decreased level of consciousness but highly unprobable unconsciousness. Moderate fractures would be more likely to be associated with a more
significant decrease in consciousness than minimal , but would still not have a high level of probability to be associated with unconsciousness.
These cases equate to 25 % of cases examined.“
“Extensive fractures would undoubtedly be associated with a level of unconsciousness and severe fractures would be highly probable to be associated with a level of unconsciousness. These cases equate to 58 % of cases examined.“
If one would add the rates from the first two groups, 17% and 25%, it results in the alleged 42% rate. BUT as you can see from these quotes from the report, there was no definite determinations in regards to the consciousness of this 42%. And furthermore, the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association questioned these findings in their September 2002 report, one of many independent reports that questioned their findings.
Then there’s the lack of collaborative evidence, specifically information on how and when these seals actually died. And the report also includes an interesting review of three years of IFAW footage, on which no live skinning had been determined because of the swimming reflex :
“18 seals were observed to be skinned, on average this occurred 60 seconds after the initial strike. It is uncertain which of these seals were bled or had a level of consciousness checked to ensure that they were not skinned while conscious.“
IFAW attempted to claim they had filmed 3 cased of live skinning in March 2001, from footage filmed in the Gulf Of St. Laurence, but all 3 cases were dismissed by members of the Animal Welfare Committee at the CVMA according to the CVMA report.
When asked if he was going to the Juno Awards during a telephone interview Matthew Good stated “When it’s actually a television broadcast that celebrates actual Canadian music, rather than who’s doing well internationally and has been in car commercials and iPod commercials … I’ll go”. (source)
I completely agree.
Since the mid 90’s the awards program has been shifting its focus away from domestic sales and talent and emphasizing acts that have had success in the States.
Even acts that are successful internationally outside of the States tend to have less exposure at the Juno Awards than pop acts who have been successful in the states.
I will not be watching the Juno Awards either this year as it no longer appeals to me.
These people have only just now banned hunting whitecoats, 22 years after the practice was banned in Canada, and they offered no timeline in regards to banning their other, unregulated, unmonitored sealing activities. Yet the activists think this is an example Canada should follow ?
Theirs is an opinion that is of course based on ignorance. They assume that the Canadian hunt is exactly the same as Russia’s so they’re easily fooled into believing this is a step forward against the big bad Canadian hunt. But the commercial hunt in Canada is regulated, monitored and Canadians don’t trap seals and keep them until they can legally be killed.
And there’s no mention of a ban of imports either, so they will likely turn to Greenland and Canada for their seal fur and possibly up their Sable fur exports to make up for their lost seal fur revenue, which would mean they’d farm, hunt and trap more of those animals instead.
Posted by canucktunes 
Posted by canucktunes 
Posted by canucktunes 