Stop the Insanity of Cultural Slaughter of Animals - Paul Watson, Sea Shepherd

[Annces]

It’s Time to Stop the Insanity of Cultural Slaughter in the Arctic



Commentary by Captain Paul Watson





I've had enough!


I don't care if I'm labeled a racist for daring to challenge the incredible wasteful slaughter of so many wildlife species. My misanthropic viewpoint negates any charges of racism anyhow. I'm critical of all human cultures equally, viewing humanity as the enemy of the natural world in a conflict where I am a proud traitor to my species and an even prouder ally to the world's non-human species and citizens.



And if anyone disagrees with that rationalization then sue me – I don't give much weight to the delusionary opinions of most humans anyhow.



Recently my long time friend Brigitte Bardot, now 73, was convicted on charges of racism in a French court for simply speaking out against the Muslim feast of Aid-el-Kebir or the cruel ritualistic slaughter of sheep.



It is a strange world when a 73 year old woman can be punished for being opposed to the slitting of the throats of sentient creatures.



In the name of culture, bloody atrocities are committed every day, unopposed and accepted without question. Culture is a politically correct gag designed to stifle any dissent to the infliction of suffering and death to living sentient beings.



I'm fed up with holier than thou self righteous defenders of human fetishes condemning me for defending the lives of non-humans. I'm fed up with the double standard that allows for an apartheid system of morality and ethics to justify cruelty and destruction.



And in the High north some of the most outrageously cruel activities are not only encouraged but applauded in the name of culture.



It's time to finally critically challenge the most politically correct wildlife killers in the world – the people of the Far North, the people of Northern Canada, Alaska, Russia, Greenland and Scandinavia, the people, white, native and everything else who run roughshod over the non-human species of the High North with rifles and harpoons, machinery and designer cold weather gear. .



Fortunately the continent of Antarctica never caught the virus of humanity until recently. Those far southern frozen shores have never been plagued by the destruction of human habitation until relatively recent times.



For millennium the penguins, the seals, the whales and the sea-birds lived in harmony within their harsh but sustainable eco-system.



It has only been in the two hundred years that humanity invaded with harpoons and rifles. And this last century has been the most horrific with millions of seals and penguins and hundreds of thousands of whales slaughtered mercilessly and rendered into oil for industry.



Live penguins were tossed screaming into boiling vats of oil on MacQuarie Island just for the half litre of oil rendered from each one. The Blue whale, the Humpback and the Fin were practically eradicated. Sea elephant, and Weddell seals were decimated. And even more recently the long-living Patagonia and Antarctic Toothfish have been hauled out of the depths to the brink of extinction.



And today, the greed of a dozen nations is focusing covetous eyes on the rich resources of the Southern continent searching for oil, for cobalt, iron, uranium and coal. And water! The greatest repository of fresh water on the planet is tempting the thirsty nations that have squandered their own natural gifts.



Soon the Far South will begin to resemble the Far North where humanity has settled in like fleas on a dog's back, stubbornly clinging to the harsh tundra and howling winters in an effort to pull wealth from the soil, the waters, and the land.



Explosions rip the soil apart in the insane quest for diamonds, gold, uranium and oil. Trucks roar across ice highways hauling in chemicals, dynamite, machinery and provisions and hauling out raw ore and black liquid gold.



Arrogant white trophy hunters hire Inuit guides to bring them into the wilderness to hunt the heads of polar bears and Grizzlies, Musk Ox and Caribou.



The very ice is melting under the great white bears and as hundreds drown in the open waters, Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska sues the U.S. government to keep the Polar bear from being listed as an endangered species so as to protect the interests of the oil companies.



And then as if it could not get crazier, Greenpeace Alaska spokesperson Melanie Duchin publicly announces that Greenpeace also opposes the listing of the Polar Bear because it will cost the jobs of Inuit hunting guides.



It will not do of course to end the "traditional" Inuit practice of guiding rich white guys from the South into the wild to blow away some white bears for a throw rug for the digs in Houston or Denver.



Recently the Inuit in Northern Canada spent over an hour ripping and blasting apart an endangered Bowhead whale with harpoons and high powered rifles. It was illegal of course but there were no arrests – the Inuit have unofficial "special dispensation" to kill whales and seals and pretty much anything else they desire to kill for recreation.



It's not about food. It's not about cultural subsistence hunting. It's about unleashing the human desire to lay waste to other species. It's about this murderous rage in some humans that erupts into the need to inflict trauma and death upon the innocent and the weak.



Just look at what happened this last week in Greenland.



Dozens of dead seals found tossed away in trash bins in the Greenland village of Ittoqqortoormiit.



The same village saw the discovery last month of scores of decomposing Narwhal bodies on the beach near the town. Slaughtered for the single tooth and left to rot..



According to Christian Isaksen, "'I've seen hunters in central and southern Greenland shoot up to 50 seals, but then they only take one home with them for food".



"There's no longer any pride connected with calling yourself a sealer," he said.



I remember being on St. Lawrence Island in 1981 and helplessly watching as some of the Yupik opened up on a group of Walrus with automatic rifles. They yanked the tusks out of dying walrus and left the animals to rot on the beach. I reported them to Fish and Wildlife and was told that there was nothing that could be done.



And native people in Siberia are slaughtering whales for cheap food for fur-farms, a fact that we exposed when we landed with a Sea Shepherd crew near Lorino, Siberia in August 1981 and again verified when we returned in 1997.



The Inuit in Alaska are legally allowed to slaughter endangered Bowheads and all across the North, Narwhal and Beluga are dying in the thousands from guns in the hands of trigger happy natives who insist they are exempt from the Endangered Species Act or from wildlife protection regulations. Some of the killing is legal but most of the slaughter is blatantly illegal – not that it matters. Actions are never taken against native hunters.



No longer dependent upon these animals for food, many Inuit now work for oil companies or the government and slaughter wildlife for recreation citing cultural rights.



It's not much different than Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska who hunts down her own "meat" despite the fact that she earns $81,468.00 a year not counting perks and benefits.



You can't claim the right to hunt for food when you get paid enough money to more than sustain your family.



But they can always be counted on to pull in some lone hunter who actually lives in the bush to speak to the camera about how he needs to hunt to feed himself and that people like me have no right to be critical of the slaughter of animals.



It's a one sided and unfair situation where dwindling populations of wild species are fighting to survive against a human predator armed with high powered weaponry, snow machines, four wheel drive vehicles and modern communications and tracking technology and it's all justified under the name of "tradition" and "culture".



It's even gotten to the point where the Inuit of Canada are going to bat for the commercial non-native mass killers of seals in Eastern Canada. It's not enough that they shoot 50 seals and keep one in the Far North, they now cheer the Newfoundlanders on as they bash in the skulls of some 300,000 seal pups a year.



Humans are all the same. Native people who state they have the right to kill because the land was originally theirs forget that they themselves stole the land from others. The history of the world is a history of genocide and land theft. Before the European tribes assaulted the Americas there was plenty of land-grabbing and species eradication going on. The Europeans brought nothing new in attitudes, there were just more of them and they had relatively more sophisticated methods of killing.



Even the description of First Nations used by indigenous peoples in Canada is not quite accurate. They are in fact the 2nd Nations. The first nations being the species that lived on the land prior to the arrival of humans from Asia, that migration that preceded the invasion from Europe. It was their land (the wild species) that was invaded first and it was they who were first exploited.



It was a partnership between Indian and whites that slaughtered the beaver, the whitetail deer, the bison and the passenger pigeons. There are no innocents in humanity's shameful legacy of destruction – all cultures are equally culpable.



What I think is most tragic is that we wipe out species and forget they were even there. Where is the Carolina parakeet, the Labrador duck, the Giant auk, the Eastern Bison, the Atlantic Gray whale, the Eastern Atlantic Walrus, the Sea mink, the belugas that once swam in Long Island Sound, the legions of animals that once ranged across the continents.



Gone! Extirpated! Obliterated! Wasted!



And yet the insanity continues with stupid words like sustainability, culture, tradition, driving the justifications for cruelty and slaughter.



In Australia, the aborigines justify the slaughter of endangered dugongs as part of their tradition. In Africa, criticisms of the slaughter of Mountain gorillas are met with charges of racism. In Norway, opposition to whaling is even condemned as cultural imperialism by non-Nordics.



If we could look at reality with the eyes of the bears, the wolves, the whales, the seals and almost every other citizen species on the planet it would be evident that there is only one species at the root of their problems and that species is united in their merciless and ruthless utilization of all other species. To them there is no such thing as color, or religion or nationality or gender. No they just see one thing – a horrific bi-pedal monster that is intent upon devouring the natural world, a creature that spits death with every breath and lays waste to habitat and to life sustaining waters and vegetation.



Homo ignoramus arrogantus, a multi-cultural, multi-racial complex species that has for many years now suffered from a very bad affliction of megalomania.



It's about time we begin to learn a little humility and begin to live with respect with the other beings that share this earth with us. They have as much right to be here as we do and if we deprive them of that right and force them to disappear, we may very well disappear very soon after.



For no species is an island entire of itself. We are all interdependent and the strength of our world lies in the diversity of the species within it and the ability of our eco-systems to sustain us.



So my message to the Inuit up in Ittoqqortoormiit, Greenland, on the shores of Baffin Island and the coast of Siberia and to the Norwegian whalers off Jan Mayen and to the Icelanders and the Russsian and also to all you rednecked Alaskan gun nuts – Stop shooting and killing everything in sight and learn to respect your fellow citizens, the non-human ones. They feel pain. They feel loss. They mourn the loss of their comrades and family and they help to run the eco-system that maintains you – so show some respect and grow up and shelf your pathetically arrogant and ignorant cultural justifications.



Remember your lessons from kindergarten and just learn to share and not to always take, take, take.



The bear, the wolf, the narwhal, the seal and the caribou have as much right to live and enjoy life as you do without fear of some macho hominid psychopath sneaking up on them and putting a bullet in their back.



To kill a seal and just to dump in the trash. To kill a Narwhal just for the tooth. To slaughter a Polar bear just for the head, to destroy a whale because it a "cultural thing," these are crimes against nature and against the future.



We need some action taken on the part of governments to put a stop to this waste and carnage. We need some enforcement of respect for nature before we lose what can never be replaced and the Polar bear, the wolf and the Narwhal go the way of the Passenger Pigeon, the Atlantic Gray whale and the Labrador duck.


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(printed in full with permission of author)

[flvegan]

1. Watson is pretty riled..

Two more months to Musashi.

[Annces]

2. They say knowledge is power

knowledge is also pain. Have to be able to take the heat to try to change destruction by humans.