March 17, 2003
The Humane Society of Canada has jumped out of the kitty litter box and splashed into the fish tank. Society brass has written a letter to Prime Minister Jean Chretien, warning him that his government’s ongoing subsidy of the seal hunt will eventually provoke a legal challenge at the World Trade Organization (WTO). The letter was prompted following the news that the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) is permitting 975,000 Harp seals to be massacred in Atlantic Canada over the next three years.
According to an HSC news release, "A comprehensive report released last year by the Montreal-based Gallon Environmental Newsletter, headed by Gary Gallon estimated that between 1995 and 2002 alone taxpayers subsidized the Canadian seal hunt to the tune of at least $20 million. The report relied on an extensive search of government documents under the Federal Access to Information Act.
HSC Executive Director Michael O'Sullivan says tax weary Canadians are fed up with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans mismanagement of marine life and the environment.
Ditto for the Society, which is tired of the depleted fish stocks being blamed on seals.
"Sealing is an inhumane and wasteful activity that encourages brutality towards animals and people. Sealing isn’t even financially viable, and exists because it is supported by tax dollars and through transfer payments received from other provinces. It is an industry that offers no substantive long-term employment to Atlantic Canada," said O’Sullivan.
The Humane Society of Canada joins the World Bank, the World Trade Organization and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, who are all agreed that the fishing industry is artificially over-subsidized by tax dollars, and that there are simply too many vessels using destructive fishing methods catching too many fish.
There are about 200 major commercial fisheries around the world, and two thirds of them are in permanent decline.
According to O’Sullivan, "the Atlantic cod fishery was one of the most productive in the world, and should have lasted for decades. " The collapse of this vital industry put more than 60,000 out of work.
"Seals are not to blame," he said. "This was human greed and stupidity, plain and simple."
The society also blames the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans for allowing Canada’s shellfish industry to be headed for collapse, and advocates having another federal agency given a renewed mandate to protect Canada’s oceans and marine life.
Port police 11, Greenpeace 0
The flag of Rainbow Warrior 11 is looking a little bedraggled these days.
Environmental activists in a tug of war with port police around the globe are losing. If there were a score card, it would be port police 100-Greenpeace 0.
Having already failed in Rotterdam harbor, Greenpeace activists met a similar fate in Marchwood port in southern England.
Police boarded the Rainbow Warrior to end its six-day blockade of a supply ship laden with tanks and helicopters preparing to sail for the Gulf. Police merely cut the ship’s anchor chain, and pulled it clear of the approaches to the port using a large tugboat.
Shortly afterwards, at around midnight, the Dart 8 cargo vessel, which had been loading equipment throughout the day, left the port for Asia where it will support thousands of British troops marshalled for a possible conflict with Iraq.
"The Dart 8 is in the process of sailing now," a Defence Ministry spokesman told Reuters. "She was scheduled to leave at 10 p.m., so she has been delayed by about two hours."
The Defense Ministry spokesman said about 20 Greenpeace activists on board had not opposed the operation, and that the matter was now in the hands of the port authority.
Greenpeace activists may be failing in their attempts to prevent ships from leaving ports, but their activities make for good theatre.
Raining on Greenpeace
Environmental activists with Greenpeace have all the bells and whistles in the prop department when they go out on the hunt for publicity. U.S. military police in the Netherlands, facing them off, have water cannons.
When a cargo ship loaded with U.S. military equipment bound for Iraq was casting off in Rotterdam, several dinghies and the Greenpeace ship, Rainbow Warrior 11, were anchored in the transport ship’s path, or were alongside it. Greenpeace activists swam in front of the NDS Progress and other members fastened themselves to the transport ship to prevent it from setting sail for the Gulf.
Dutch harbor police arrived with speedboats and cut ropes the protesters were trying to attach to the side of the Progress, while military police fired water cannons at them from above.
"We want to send a signal to the U.S. and British governments, but also to the Dutch government, which is going along too easily with preparations for military conflict instead of looking for a peaceful solution," said Greenpeace spokeswoman Maartje van Bokel.
Nineteen demonstrators were arrested by police but Greenpeace members later boasted that at least 10 of them had been released by the time the Progress made it out of port--about eight hours behind schedule.
The peace professor
While Greenpeace and Company are claiming a monopoly on world peace, they have little control on the thousands of peaceniks out in the battlefield.
The sharp division between those calling for peace and those heading for war crystallized recently in San Antonio, when UTSA teachers and students on both sides of the issue clashed.
"They’re lying to you, kids," yelled Fred Bergman, a student at UTSA who attended what was supposed to be an informational session at the school. Bergman got up to leave in protest of what he perceived to be an anti-war rally. As he left, a professor flipped Bergman’s jacket hood in retaliation.
UTSA’s vice-president said the brief encounter between the student and teacher is now under investigation by the school. "We have 23,000 people in our university community and I have a feeling that we have 23,000 different opinions concerning the world situation right now," said Vice-president David Gabler.
The VP made no comment about the professor’s unpeaceful like action to a university student.
Bergman, by the way, was planning to file charges against the Prof.
Holocaust on Your Plate
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) which equates the life of a boy to the life of a rat, has now raised the ire of Jewish leaders with an ad campaign that likens the slaughtering of farm animals to the calculated execution of six million Holocaust victims.
Infamous for its outrageous publicity stunts, PETA is currently touring North America with gigantic posters that depict the supposed similarities between Nazi death camps and present day factory farms.
But Jewish organizations say the campaign--titled Holocaust on Your Plate--belittles millions of murders in an attempt to shame a few meat eaters into vegetarianism.
"To equate what is truly one of the most monumental crimes in the history of mankind to the abusive treatment of animals is unconscionable," said Manuel Prutschi, the national director of community relations for the Canadian Jewish Congress. "The analogy is obscene. It is totally lacking in any proportionality."
Getting their Kyoto exemption cards
Canadian industry soon could ask where are their Kyoto Exemption cards.
Apparently, Liberal heir apparent Paul Martin’s Canada Steamship Line, and others like it, are fully Kyoto-exempt.
What gives?
Although greenhouse gas emissions from international flights and maritime shipping are excluded from the emission reduction targets of the Kyoto protocol, and from emission inventories, they represent a significant and growing concern. In the EU, these emissions represented 4 percent (157 million tonnes CO2 equivalent) of total emissions in 1990, and 6 percent (234 million tonnes CO2 equivalent in 2000.
Guess in the Kyoto emissions barnstead, some animals are more equal than others.