That was sarcasm. In case you were wondering.

ScoobyDoo:

Not quite the same, but on topic:

http://www.thoseshirts.com/club.html

Sad update. As far as I know, there are no T-shirts that say "Club Liberals, not sandwiches"

I read about it on www.imao.us, but it was just a sign some kid made. There was no commercially produced shirt. Of course if there is some enterprising youth out there, or even just somebody with a CafePress account, the dream could become a reality.

/going to Europe in a couple months. Where can I score me some baby seal boots?

If you are against all forms of animal killing, then I can somewhat accept and respect that argument.

But if you're just jumping in and saying "ohh the poor baby seals" just after you chow down on a chicken nugget or a hamburger then fark you in your stupid ass, you stupid assfarker.

underdog - right. And the last thing we need is another refugee crisis of unemployed Newfoundlanders.

I'd hit it...

/I'll get me hat, someone hold the door.

It is on topic, Dasboot.

From the article:

At the last Sundance film festival, people wore a new T-shirt that said "Club sandwiches, not seals."

And the shirt I mentioned is a parody of that shirt.

Well, seeing as I wore leather gloves to work today, and had some bacon at breakfast, I dont think I can say this is wrong. Seems a little sad to whack them, but hey, top of the food chain is a nice place to sit.

as a Canadian, I'm embarassed that that this still goes on in a civilized society.

soon global warming will melt all the ice and the lousy hunters will have NO means of survival. I hope they resort to cannibalism of each other.

That guy's a lefty.

Swing away!

Glad to see people just totally ignored my reasonable questions and headed off to the irrational flamewar. So here it is again:

Why is clubbing a seal any more wrong than killing a plant? So what if a seal flops around and has cute fur? What has that to do with anything? Why is it barbaric?

I don't think the point is merely that they are being killed, etymxris, it's that they're being bludgeoned and skinned alive not for our survival, but our vanity.

Other animals that are slaughtered for our use are done so more quickly and painlessly. Plants don't even feel pain.

Again, the issue is not with the killing, it's with the method.

I don't see why the animal's pain is relevant. Nor do I see why that they are being skinned for "vanity" relevant either. Both of your reasons rely on an anthropomorphism of animals I just reject. Animals are to us as plants are. Neither is better than the other.

Anthropomorphism:


Not anthropomorphism:


The difference to me is in sentience. You are saying that all things that are alive are the same, and I'm saying that some of those alive things have a higher state of consciousness and can feel pain, hunger, fear, etc... and thus are not in the same category of organism as plants.

Stupid seals

Is it that time again? Gotta get out my Labrador Slugger (TM)...

The decimation of the cod-fishing industry on the east coast of Canada is in large part due to the animal rights activists' quest to end the seal hunt. Aside from the "Oh, but they're so cute..." factor, seals to cod are no different than locusts/gophers to crops.

And for all you yahoos that wear those "Against Animal Testing" shirts, the dye that was used to print them was originally tested on animals first.

etymxris
"I don't see why the animal's pain is relevant ... Both of your reasons rely on an anthropomorphism of animals I just reject."

Sorry, but you can't just ideologically reject that animals feel pain just like we do. There is no doubt scientifically that at least mammals and birds feel pain (contain the same brain structures, show similar brain activity when injured). That animals feel pain due to a mechanism virtually identical to our own can't be disputed by any means other than some self-serving religious crap (ie. saying that humans are completely seperate from and above other animals, without specifying what characteristic defines the seperation).

It's no more "anthromorphism" than assuming that other humans feel pain is; both are natural assumptions, and there's no scientific reason to say either is incorrect.

So, what is your argument exactly? That they can't reason complexly like we can? I can't really accept that argument... we all know how terrible physical pain can be, and we know that when we're in extreme pain, whether or not we can solve math problems and make plans for the future isn't too important; it still hurts just as much.

Killing is a different matter, I don't really have any problem with killing animals for human purposes as long as they're raised in comfortable conditions and killed painlessly.

awesome.

On the other hand, maybe not so awesome.

I think I'm going to be sick.

(nsfw)

You have to have an IQ in the double digits to believe the bullshiat that population control is an issue. Nature does not allow any population to grow beyond its environment's capacity to sustain it, it's that simple. It has always been that way, it will always be that way. Whether the environment is artificial or not.
The idea that seals are annoying is a perversion beyond belief. If the misery we inflict on animals for all the various reasons we deem that course of action necessary is not enough of a condemnation, then at least the endless pain we inflict upon our own species should serve as some kind of hint that if there is one pesky species roaming the planet it is us, and none other.
The biggest recorded distance for a sniper hit is 2,430 meters. What is the furthest distance you can hit a seal clubber from?

I don't know about each and every seal, but a lot if not all of the meat is kept and used. The people out there clubbing are mostly natives and ex-fishermen who don't have a job and the seal meat is a means of survival. I have eaten canned seal meat and hated it (incredibly oily and salted) but when you live in a place where baloney is too expensive for most families you eat what is cheap and plentiful. They probably don't show that on most videos of the hunt since it would tone down the shocking message meant for whitebread suburbanites.

Seal oil is also used to burn in lamps and is added to other lubricants. It is also used as a waterproofing agent IIRC.

Why do they call this "HUNTING"? Where is the "GAME" in this? I'm not getting into the political BS of this topic, but I just want to point out my problem with the symantics. Wouldn't "HUNTING" be observing your "PREY" from afar, using stealth to get close enough to try and make your kill and it would be a "GAME" because the prey would have a chance to counter the hunter by escaping or attacking? In some instances there would even be some risk involved, like hunting for bear?

Farktastic

"They probably don't show that on most videos of the hunt since it would tone down the shocking message meant for whitebread suburbanites."

Would I be right in guessing you haven't seen the videos linked to in earlier posts?

Shooting a seal and watching it flail around drowning in the water... bashing a seal several times then dragging it away as it squirms and leaves a trail of blood... whether the meat is put to good use or not is irrelevant, what's going on in the videos is entirely unnecessary for obtaining meat.

Brasshat, your argument does not make sense. It may be true that a population does not grow beyond its environment's capacity to sustain it... But how do you think that happens? The animals starve and die, that's how! It's not like the animals ovaries all-of-a-sudden decide to produce less eggs (yeah yeah there are exceptions). In the meantime, one sort of animal population might overeat and thus eliminate another species in the process.

Are you against the SPCA? One of their methods of preventing animal cruelty is to control the population of stray animals, and to accomplish that goal they sometimes take in strays and kill them. But according to you, the strays would fend for themselves. Is the SPCA run by people with double-digit IQs?

I can't say for certain whether or not pop control is required for the seal poputation.. the information on both sides is far too biased to be taken seriously. But you can't throw away population control as being uniformly useless.

Artimon:

I am a hunter. I can tell you when animals get shot in the head, they bleed, convulse, shiat themselves and a whole lot of other things as well. I don't condone their methods, but tell me, is this any less or more humane than say, buffalo jumps, where thousands of animals are herded over a cliff and crush each other? They bleed more, scream, and die a lot more slowly than these seals.

I suspect they are clubbed because that is the way the seal hunt has been done for hundreds of years. Why change an effective practice for urban viewers?

Personally, I don't care how they die. It is a nice thing for those people to go home and have a nutritious meal instead of hoping the welfare check can be stretched for just one more day.

Frankly, I'm OK with killing seals.

I don't freak out when people around me eat hamburgers. I don't throw paint on people who wear fur and leather. In fact, I own things made of leather, and I eat meat. Not only that, I also support people who hunt deer, or ducks, or whatever else they hunt, and people who trap animals for a living.

As long as it isn't endangering the survival of the species, I don't see a problem with it. Yes, it is human interference in the environment, but I think it's safe to say that humans do a lot worse in the environment as it is.

Go after the people wearing the fur, not the poor hunter trying to feed his family. And go after the people driving SUVs and creating global warming that's going to completely destroy the habitat of these baby seals. In a couple of years, they'll all be dead anyhow because they won't have anything to eat or anywhere to live. Perhaps you can spare the cute little baby seals a though the next time you're filling the tank at the gas station. You're doing the same thing as the guy clubbing the seal over the head and dragging its bleeding corpse along the ice, except you don't have to deal with the mess.

Farktastic

I just got the impression from the videos I saw that the hunters really didn't care how much pain they caused, and that they could have with the slightest bit of extra effort made the process much less painful (by making sure to kill the seals quickly).

I'm sure clubbing can be done rather painlessly, but if it's done in any sort of significant numbers in the manner shown in the videos, then that's just disgusting. Tradition is no excuse for unnecessary cruelty.

Farktastic

And about these "buffalo jumps"... I haven't heard of that. If you mean that humans incite the buffalo to do that, then yes, that does sound quite a bit worse than the seal hunting.

Artimon: You've never heard of a buffalo jump? Have you been living in a spider hole for the past... oh... 10,000 years?

Basically, the humans get the buffalo to stampede, over a cliff. It's a practice that has led to some interesting place-names, such as "Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump" in Alberta. (No shiat, that's it's actual name.)

Buffalo-jumping was an ancient Native American practice and reflected a legitimate hunting method where death was a possibility (no guns) for the hunters and the existence of their social unit depended on it.

They respected the life of the animal they killed and prayed for its soul as well as thanked it for sustaining them. Then they used every last part of the flesh to feed and protect themselves and bones make tools to help do the same.

Clubbing baby seals is not the same.

Artimon

Yeah, they don't look like they care much, but then I would suspect neither does the guy that electrocutes cows at the local meat processing plant either. I don't think shooting the seals in the head would make for that much more of a humane death, although it would reduce some of the blood.

BTW, buffalo jumps were used by plains aboriginals to kill herds of bison or buffalo. Their practices were adopted by settlers and are one of the reasons bison were hunted almost to extinction. A group of hunters scare a herd into running, and other hunters form a huge funnel shaped line and scare the herd into running over a cliff. They wait until most if not all the animals are dead and then butcher them. You can imagine why the historical jump south of Calgary is named "Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump." It's a UNESCO World Heritage site.

WsKne

So the difference between the two is the ritual around the killing? Most of the areas that seal clubbing go on in are predominantly Inuit or Catholic religions. If the Catholics pray before eating does that satisfy you?

Reverence aside, I don't see how either practice is inherently wrong.

Unnecessary and uncivilized. Stoopid canucks.

If it were legal, I'd club the farkers who club the seals.

Bastards.

Canada sucks.

Farktastic

"Yeah, they don't look like they care much"

Yep, that's pretty much my whole problem with it. Hunting is alright (the animals were going to die somehow anyway, and it probably wasn't to be a particularly good death), but doing it without any regard for the animal's pain isn't any better than stabbing a cat for fun. The same goes for farm and slaughterhouse workers (as well as the people who manage those places and set up the procedures); the concept is alright, but it's often done so carelessly as to be completely morally indefensible.

No, farktastic, that's not it at all.

I'm not talking about a ritual, I'm talking about the fact that the Native Americans hunted in this way because it was effective.
BUT... they didn't relish in the hunting, and saw it as a means to survive. They did it because they HAD to. The fact that they were spiritual about it doesn't change the reason for the hunt.

I only brought that up to show that Native Americans espoused the idea that everything on Earth is equally important, and they prayed to try to atone for the necessity of killing. This is before widespread agriculture, don't forget.

Farktastic

"Reverence aside, I don't see how either practice is inherently wrong."

Are you saying killing slowly by crushing and suffocation is totally fine? Maybe if it were the only way of getting meat, and otherwise all the people in the area would die... but surely in most circumstances there is a much better way of doing it... clubbing maybe?

Club a Baby Seal for a Better Deal!

/obscure?

"I'm so crazy, I'm gonna club me this baby seal!!!"

Yeah... what's that from?

Oh yeah.... now I remember.

Do I still get to be the janitor?

2004-04-05 02:12:15 PM Artimon
I am neither religious nor spiritual. I accept that there are behaviors in animals that are analagous to human behaviors, and that subjective experiences may be similar too. But I reject that any moral mandate follows from such things. So what if they are similar to humans as a natural kind? Morally, they are as distinct from humans as plants. My objection does not rely on anything empirical. Ultimately, no morality does. To reason otherwise is to commit the naturalistic fallacy.

Yup, that's the essence of it: They are cute.

If they were ugly no one would care.

No, people still would, but then you'd label them fanatics.

I take it that there needs to be some reason that they are baby seals?? Quality of fur? Hope those biatches enjoy their skins; I'm sure it'll go nicely with their blood diamonds.

etymxris

My problem with your argument is that you don't specify why exactly humans are completely morally distinct from other animals. Here's how I think about it... humans evolved from less intelligent animals; at what point did they enter a different class of morality? What difference between humans and other animals puts them in seperate moral classes?

Maybe there are good arguments as to why humans don't need to consider animals interests, but just saying that it's because they're human is too vague a statement. It's just asserting our own species' total superiority over all else, without saying why we're entitled to that; it's arbitrary and too self-serving to be taken seriously. Obviously there are important differences between humans and other animals, so could you explain why we're so different from animals that we are entitled to ignore their interests?

They are not that cute. Club'm. My wife wants fur.

I diamond my girl.

I spade my cat.

I heart my dog.

I club my seal.

/thankyouverymuchIllbehereallzeweek

I watched those videos, and I don't find them particularly disgusting. If you want to keep the local system in balance, you have to take action to cull the local animal populations. Otherwise, you might be facing problems somewhere down the road.