Monday, June 14, 2010

We're Insane

First a quote from Paul Watson, of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society:
Back in July of 1975 we descended into a trough between some whales, and we just sat there in this boat really transfixed. As a whale rolled about on the surface I caught his eye and he looked straight at us and I saw understanding. I saw that the whale understood what we were trying to do. But the other thing I saw in that eye was pity, and not for himself or his kind, but for us. At that moment a harpoon went over our heads and slammed into the backside of one of the females in the pod, and she screamed and rolled on her side. It was like a woman screaming. I said "well, here we are destroying this incredibly intelligent, socially complex, beautiful creature." And that’s when it occurred to me: we’re insane. As a species we’re insane. So quite frankly, I don’t really care what people think about what we do. They can criticize us all they want, but their opinions mean nothing to me.
Then this news, which nobody really seems to be aware of. See the idea is that there's a global whaling ban in place right now, but certain countries continue to slaughter whales anyway, ya know for "research," and then they just coincidentally happen to sell the meat on the market once their "research" is done, which is pretty much right after they get the whale killed and butchered. So instead of banning whale hunting we should publicly condone it and instead just ask if please please pretty please would they just limit the number of whales they kill and limit their whaling to the whale "sanctuary" in the Antarctic pretty please with sugar on top? Don't you love the Orwellian use of the word "sanctuary" here? We're gonna call it a sanctuary while allowing whales to be slaughtered there. War is peace, freedom is slavery, etc etc. And of course, our government appears to be going along with it, in a secretish back-door sort of way.

To take action, you can donate here, and sign petitions here and here.

4 comments:

  1. How awful! I feel like all the media focus on the oil spill also serves to distract us from the hundreds of other important things going on.

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  2. Anonymous6/14/2010

    It really does seem like a stamp of approval for their actions. Grrr!

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  3. I've stopped watching Whale Wars because it's too intense for me. It's not that I don't care, it's just that I can't take it. No doubt that's the idea.

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  4. Melba Toast6/15/2010

    I really do think that the media hype around "big" news stories is a terrible disservice to us as a nation because so many of us miss out on important things like this. Needless to say I signed the petitions. Thanks for bringing our attention to this.

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