I never want to hear a Canadian touting the virtues of their pacifist, multicultural, humane, and internationalist society ever again. This week begins the migration of the harp seal from Greenland to Eastern Canada. The harp seal is one of very few seal species that does not lose its soft fur almost immediately after birth. Instead, the seals will retain their fur for 12 weeks or more. Canadian fur traders kill the seals in a nasty orgy of violence -- they stalk the babies across the ice and bludgeon them to death. The seal fur is used in Scandinavia and Russia for clothing, and the seal's penis is used in Chinese "traditional" medicine (another vestige of third world ignorance). Canada's most recent justifications are that the seal herds have destroyed cod fish stocks (the International Foundation for Animal Welfare claims that overfishing is the cause, according to its spokesman on Neil Cavuto's show on Fox News last night) and numbers are too high. But pelts are gaining high prices on the market, therefore the hunt is not an attempt to cull the herds (that could be done by euthanizing the seals, not beating them to death), just a profit-taking.
It's not a sign of the apocalypse. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), noted liberal Senator, and I agree on something: the harp seal hunt is disgusting.
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