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Jewish World Review April 4, 2005 / 24 Adar II, 5765 Canada's cruel slaughter of harp seals By Tucker Carlson
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
This week, Canada begins its annual slaughter of harp seals. Commercial hunters descend on ice floes armed with clubs and spears. They stab and bludgeon the seal pups, and then skin them, often alive. Skinless pups crawl across the ice, wailing as they slowly die. Their bodies are left to rot. Their pelts are sold to China to be made into fashion accessories. Between now and May 15th, the Canadians will butcher more than 300,000 seal pups, the largest single killing of mammals in the world.
It's a slaughter so barbaric and revolting and cruel, we won't show you pictures of it. For decades, international organizations have protested its brutality. Still, it remains legal in Canada.
The Canadian government justifies this gruesome behavior on economic grounds. The hunters have to do it, goes the argument. They need the money.
But wait. Isn't Canada supposed to be a model welfare state, where every child is raised by a village, and the needy are treated with dignity and compassion? Or is it instead the sort of place where the poor have to crush the skulls of newly-born harp seals in order to survive? It can't be both.
The truth is that, for all its sanctimonious boasting, Canada is a flawed country like any other, and more than most. But even flawed countries should have standards. Canada would like to be regarded as a civilized nation. But it won't be — and it shouldn't be — until it bans the pointlessly cruel slaughter of harp seals.
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© 2005 Tucker Carlson |
Mitch Albom | ||||||||||||
