I don't know if I've had an epiphany or what - or if - you know how sometimes changing you point of view just slightly changes your whole world-view completely.... shit, that maybe what the definition of an epiphany is.... but anyway, I got emailed another piece about Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd this morning - because they're in the news in the last couple days again, so once again they've got me thinking about the whole sealing - the slaughtering of animals in a public place (out on the ice) as opposed to the slaughtering of animals in private - in a slaughter house where they kill chickens and cows and pigs - and WHY IS IT so much worse to kill a seal than it is to kill a chicken? And my only answer is because the killing of the seal is done in public - so my opinion has always been to tell the Paul Watson's of the world to go back to "where they come from" and do what they're doing to their local slaughterhouses and shut them down before they come here and shut down one of our niche industries that isn't any worse than what's going on in their own back yard - but that's going on in private. And this is coming from an animal rights advocate - a bleeding heart liberal who won't kill a house fly (literally) but instead traps it and takes it outside where it will be free to try and get inside my house again.
But this morning a thought occurred to me that has begun to ruminate. I'm beginning to think that the seals are very lucky to have Paul Watson and people like him. I've always said that the seal hunt is wrong - but it's AS wrong as killing chickens and cows and pigs. But the idea that I was missing before is that chickens and cows and pigs don't have any Paul Watson's. The chickens have Karen Davis and United Poultry Concerns - and laboratory animals have a whole bunch of kooks who're willing to blow up buildings and set people and things on fire - but no one has the flair of Paul Watson and his crew. Or the stamina - and the branding of him either.
So today I've started to think about Mr Watson differently - and I wonder where my thinking is going to end up. Right now I'm feeling somewhat conflicted, but I think my point is - if cows and pigs and chickens had their own Paul Watsons' - I am QUITE sure that there would be 1,000's - and maybe 10's of 1,000's MORE vegetarians in Canada and the United States. Of that I am COMPLETELY QUITE CONVINCED.
Here's the article I was sent this morning from Karen Dawn at Dawnwatch:
National Post (f/k/a The Financial Post) (Canada)
January 23, 2006 Monday
National Edition
ISSUES & IDEAS; Pg. A15
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Confessions of a career criminal
Paul Watson, National Post
I must confess it: I am a proud and unrepentant career criminal.
Since 1976, I have repeatedly disobeyed my government by opposing the annual Canadian slaughter of seals.
I refuse to call it a "hunt." Bashing in the heads of helpless young seals in a nursery is an obscene slaughter. It is not a hunt.
I have been repeatedly beaten, arrested, threatened, jailed and fined for three decades, and I will continue to be a repeat offender for the next three decades if need be.
They arrested me in 1979 for painting baby harp seals with an indelible organic dye to damage the commercial value of the pelts. They arrested me again in 1981 for taking a kayak out to the seals. And again in 1983 for blocking sealing ships in the ice. They arrested me in 1993 for chasing foreign draggers off the Grand Banks and they arrested me in 2005 for the "crime" of approaching within half a nautical mile of a seal hunt without permission from the government.
In total, the government of Canada has spent many millions of dollars trying to punish me and my crew for our compassion for the seals.
In the latest round, the government charged 11 crew members of the ship Farley Mowat (of which I am captain) after they were assaulted by sealers on the ice off Prince Edward Island on March 31, 2005. The crew were under orders by me to photograph the sealers and not to defend themselves if attacked. They were hit with fists, boots and sealing clubs. They took the blows, and despite two cameras being destroyed, they documented the entire assault.
The sealers weren't charged because, according to the RCMP, my crew provoked the violence by filming them.
Instead, Fisheries officers accused my crew of violating the Marine Mammal regulations, which state that "no person shall, except under the authority of a seal fishery observation licence ... approach within one-half nautical mile of a person who is on the ice fishing for seals."
A few months later, they decided to charge me, too. They also threw in some charges under the Canada Shipping Act for good measure.
We responded by initiating a legal challenge to the regulations preventing our access to the seal hunt. Our position is that depriving us of access to the area where seals are killed is a violation of the free-expression rights contained in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
In her judgment, Prince Edward Island Judge Nancy Orr exhibited some appreciation for this argument. She wrote: "The applicant's right to freedom of expression has been infringed in this case by the provisions of sections 32 and 33 of the Marine Mammal regulations."
But in the next paragraph, she ruled that the government's infringement of our rights was justified under the loophole contained in Section 1 of the Charter: "The [Canadian government] has clearly shown on the evidence in this matter that these regulations are demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society." And so, our defence on Charter grounds was rejected.
We also noted that the regulations do not apply "to a person who resides within one-half nautical mile of a person who is on the ice fishing for seals." And we argued that our ship, the Farley Mowat, was our place of residence.
The judge accepted this argument and I was acquitted because, as captain, I never left the ship.
My crew, on the other hand, had walked across the ice to document the sealers' actions. And so they were judged guilty of the dastardly crime of documenting the seal hunt. They have been ordered to pay $1,000 in fines each.
They will not do so. They have elected to go to jail and to engage in a hunger strike on behalf of the seals instead. We also intend to launch further appeals.
Moreover, we intend to return once again to oppose the cruelty and the obscenity of the largest mass slaughter of marine mammals in the world.
During the last three years, the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans has permitted the destruction of over one million young seals in a heavily subsidized program that has sullied the reputation of this great nation with the stain of cruelty. As long as seals are clubbed and shot, their bodies skinned alive, and the ice nurseries of the harp and hood seals stained with blood, my crew and I will continue to oppose the policy of the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans.
If opposing this slaughter is a crime, then we are proud to be compassionate criminals defending life from the profits of destruction.
(END OF WATSON'S NATIONAL POST PIECE)
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(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at http://www.DawnWatch.com.
Category: [Sealing]
Category: [Animal Rights]
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