An Unpopular View

The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly - it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.


Joeseph Goebbels

This will not be a popular post. If you are easily swayed by pictures of cute whitecoat seals then this probably isn't for you. Anyways...

I was not particularly surprised when I read about the recent ban of seal products into the EU. There seems to be a growing trend of false enviromentalism, cheap populism with a unhealty dose of hypocrisy thoughout what used to be Europe. Unsatisfied with their singlehanded destruction of fish stocks off the grand banks in the 80's and 90's the EU has decided to further stick it to the residents of the poorest and most isolated parts of Canada by banning the product which had hitherto comprised a significant portion of their annual income.


The main reason cited by the drafters of this ban was the "inherent cruelty" of the hunt. Excuse me? Did you say cruelty? Well lets consider some european humaneness towards animals. Muskrats on the order of 500,000 per year are killed in Belgium and Holland alone. They used to be killed for their fur but are now (since the animal rights activists lauuched a campaign) killed as a nuisance animal and the carcasses are left for rot. In France geese are force fed with a long metal tube till they die for the sole purpose of extracting their swollen livers au fois gras. Germany culls thousands of wild deer and boar for sport hunting, mostly for the trophy heads. And the nadir or course is Bull fighting in Spain where the bulls are badgered and barbed before a live audience before being put down with a sword. The european parliament seems also to have overlooked their own domestic fur farms which raises animals for the sole purpose of skinning them and dwarfs the seal hunt by a factor of 500:1. Yup it all makes me wonder how these MEPs could brand the seal hunt as cruel but somehow overlook their own little cruelties in animal welfare.

Fact is its easy for the EU to adopt a pseudo moral position in regards to seals: it doesn't cost them anything in the way of votes. I would like to seem them try to ban foix gras - the resulting jacquerie would have them climbing over each in retreat.

The real evil here are all these groups such ass IFAW, HSUS, Animal Liberation Front, Respect for Animals, PETA etc etc ad nauseum which use seals as a poster child to raise funds to support their fraudulant organisations. If there was ever a bigger bunch of hypocrites on this planet I've yet to meet them. These groups have no real interest in ecology or animal welfare. If they did they would have been doing more to stop overfishing and habitat encroachment instead of recruiting sexy starlets and other easily-led celebutards into posing in front of cameras to protect species of animals that don't need protection. No form of mis-information is too low for these groups and they seem to have a Goebbels like touch of telling the big one and hoping that the great mass of the people will fall for it. So far it appears to be working.

The EU should look to its own before labelling other peoples lifestyle choices inhumane. When Gucci starts making fashion products out of straw and the Germans start making their bratwurst from tofu then they can't start lecturing the rest of us. Hypocrites one and all.