The seal hunt

Anyone catch Paul and Heather McCartney drubbing Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams on Larry King Live about the upcoming March seal hunt or 'harvest' ?
Right off the top Williams brings up 9/11, and how 13,000 stranded Americans found homes for a week in Newfoundland and Labrador, homes with sealers and their families.
And how he and his daughters are animal lovers.
So, a little defensive then.

And he was more than a little creepy later in his response to Heather McCartney's complaint that the seals are killed just for fashion while their meat is left on the ice to rot and King's question as to why Canada doesn't forgo this 'harvest' in favour of eco-tourism.
Williams :
"These organizations, the IFAW, Green Peace, PETA raise significant amounts of money. There are hundreds of millions of dollars that are being raised by these organizations.And let me tell you the FBI right now have a file opened in their terrorism division investigating organizations like this, including the PETA organization, from a terrorism perspective."
Obviously Williams was confusing eco-tourism with eco-terrorism here.

So there's a universal moratorium on even mentioning opposition to the seal hunt if you've ever so much as eaten a boiled egg in your life. And it was a lot of work twenty years ago to get the minimum age at which baby seals can be killed up to 12 days, where it stands now.
Plus who wants to be labelled a weepy bleeding heart who is swayed by celebrities and cares more about cuteness than income for out-of-work fishermen?

I'll take that label.
Cuteness - If we can't respond to the needless slaughter of baby animals that appeal to us, how well are we going to do when confronted with the slaughter of frogs or spiders? Not too well so far. Let's start with the seals and work out from there.
Income - Fishermen have certainly been royally fucked around by the Canadian government and Premier Danny Williams is right to defend them as best he can. So why not eco-tourism? Why not take the Canadian taxpayers' money that Fisheries and Oceans Canada now spends on "aerial patrols, surface (vessel) patrols, dockside inspections of vessels at landing sites and inspections at buying and processing facilities. In 2004, Fishery Officers spent approximately 8600 hours monitoring and enforcing the hunt. In the last five years, 94 charges were laid and convictions were upheld in 57 of those cases" and invest it in jobs in eco-tourism for fishermen instead?
Celebrities - Robert Thurman, the early Buddhist campaigner for public awareness on the plight of Tibet, was once asked how he could countenance support from frivolous celebrities like Richard Gere. I have to paraphrase Thurman's answer because I can't find the quote, but it was something along the lines of - 'Celebrities already have everything they could ask for - money, fame, security, recognition in their field and all their needs taken care of. They are therefore perfectly situated to think about what's really important in the world.'

Thanks for listening.

CBC FOC