Please Help Stop The Culling Of Seals In Canada

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It's a foul business - if anyone thinks smashing a seal pup's head in could in any way be humane, then I hate to think of what they consider brutal treatment is. This is so arcane in the 21st Century, but on a par with the disingenuous Japanse 'scientific' whaling ships. Such savagery - and one thinks of Canada as such a civilized country, otherwise.
 
The bastard Japanese whalers have killed 850 minke whales, nearly double their toll last year, thanks to 'increased breeding'. They've just finished for their bloodstained season. Of course, all this shit is dressed up in pseudo-jargon, about 'research only being possible if we kill these whales' (I didn't think the Japs had much of a sense of humour until I read this tosh). The strange coincidence that the research material then makes its way onto the open commercial market seems to have passed them by... the curse of a thousand poxes on them until eternity, I say.
 
For all their politeness and good manners, the Japs are down there with the French in my international vermin rankings. Only the Israelis and South Africans are below them.
 
Originally posted by Homer J@Apr 15 2006, 07:40 PM

Only the Israelis and South Africans are below them.
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Israel below the French? that is fecking outrageous. I fell a Merlin like emoticon blowout coming on. :angy: :angy: :angy: etc.
 
Oh, those, ovverbruv - the ones forcibly exiled from their own homeland (that place that was once Palestine) by the bumbling British Balfour Agreement? The ones whose homes were appropriated without compensation for the State of Israel, and the ones whose farmlands are now cut in half by the Israeli Dividing Wall? Not the ones, then, who still live by the thousand in stinking, unsanitary, 'temporary' refugee camps in friendly Arab countries, after some 30 years, disenfranchised in every possible respect?

And what's wrong with South Africans, for God's sake? The Bantu, or the Matabele, or the Zulu, or the Swazi, Homer? Or perhaps the Ndebele? What the hell have they done to warrant such name-calling?
 
Originally posted by krizon@Apr 16 2006, 10:41 PM



And what's wrong with South Africans, for God's sake? The Bantu, or the Matabele, or the Zulu, or the Swazi, Homer? Or perhaps the Ndebele? What the hell have they done to warrant such name-calling?
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I think the matabele were in Rhodesia.
 
The Matabele tribe ranged across what is called South Africa to what is now Zimbabwe, Euro, where there is a North and a South Matabeleland. You have to remember that Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland (currently Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Malawi) were a federation of colonial slices making up the larger British pie in Africa, originally under the auspices of the powerful British South Africa Company (which grabbed the Matabeles' lands in 1889).

'South Africa' is a white, colonial, construct. The tribes that lived there were often displaced through intertribal fighting, the influx of the Boers pushing them out, then the BSA, and lived across what are Western-imposed national map lines. African tribes didn't have 'countries' - they intermingled for trade, and followed the seasons in many places, while some were nomadic by culture, but it was Western notions of national boundaries and census-taking which put tribes 'in their place'.

Interestingly, the San (commonly knows as 'the bushmen') not only ranged throughout what we call South Africa, but also what is now Zimbabwe. The Mashona are another tribe which once ranged across what are now the imposed national boundaries of Southern Rhodesia/Zimbabwe and South Africa. There are dozens and dozens of tribes throughout sub-Saharan Africa, with their own languages or dialects, and their lives were lived across the landscape without heed of a nation - bounded sometimes by rivers or natural features, but without the national identities later pressed upon them. Some aspects of colonization were benign, in terms of health, child welfare, education, hygiene, sanitation, farming and animal husbandry. But, on the other hand, if the Belgians had never colonized and trumpeted their phony notions of eugenics, the dreadful massacres of Tutsi by Hutu and Hutu by Tutsi would never have happened.
 
Originally posted by krizon@Apr 16 2006, 09:41 PM
And what's wrong with South Africans, for God's sake? The Bantu, or the Matabele, or the Zulu, or the Swazi, Homer? Or perhaps the Ndebele? What the hell have they done to warrant such name-calling?
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Fair enough Kri. I have never been there. I meant the ones (invariably whites) who come to live in London. Arrogant and aggressive almost to a man.
 
Originally posted by krizon@Apr 16 2006, 09:41 PM
And what's wrong with South Africans, for God's sake? The Bantu, or the Matabele, or the Zulu, or the Swazi, Homer? Or perhaps the Ndebele? What the hell have they done to warrant such name-calling?
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Lets see.

Forcibly exiled people from their homeland.
Appropriated homes without compensation.
Turned (someone else's) open bush country into poorly managed farmland.
Murdered the occupants of said country because they were "untermensch" (I don't know the Bantu word for untermensch).
 
Simmo - sorry, but WHO are you on about? South Africans burning farmsteads and murdering hundreds of South African farmers? We are more than just a LITTLE along from apartheid, you know, and everyone is a South African, regardless of tribal persuasion, mixed race heritage, Chinese, Malay, Dutch, British, German, or Boer background. Would you like to pick out the people you mean?

Back to the seals - I signed the petition, Kathy. The cull is pointless, brutal, and anachronistic. On the other hand, we humans think nothing of killing off thousands of our own species at a time when it suits us, so it's little wonder animals are held in such scant regard by many.
 
Originally posted by krizon@Apr 17 2006, 07:59 PM
Simmo - sorry, but WHO are you on about?
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The Bantu speaking tribes (or dialectic variant thereon) you mentioned above all originated from Central Africa and "invaded" the South of Africa, beginning the cull of the indigenous San people who lived there previously.

They were joined in this activity a couple of hundred years later by the Dutch, Germans and British (and probably the Portuguese as well).

I didn't realise that there was a timescale whereby you are absolved from land stealing/murdering etc. Someone better tell the Irish pronto.
 
We'll join you in asking for compensation from the Vikings, the Romans, and the pesky Normans, then, simmo. I mean, who asked for bloody Hadrian's Wall, anyway? Or raping Boudicca's daughters? Or those nasty angular churches? A pox on all invaders and colonizers...


... a bit like humans invading seal communities to smash 'em, isn't it?
 
Simmo, sorry, but you ought to look up something like Wikipedia if you want to know about Bantu-speaking tribes. While some did wander down to the south of Africa, you ought to know that there are some 400 Bantu-speaking tribes ranging from the area of Cameroon to the very south. They already existed across swathes of Africa, as did, and do, the Bush (or khoikhoi or 'click' tribes) today. The Bushmen didn't have their own lands, so they could not have been appropriated, since land ownership was not a tribal concept to them. True, there were apartheid-era attempts to control and restrict them to certain areas, but they are not 'culled' in the sense you mention, which would imply planned killing. Virtually all of Africa's tribes have dominated another at some time or other, since why would their history be any different to Asian or European? Invading weaker tribes' villages and carrying off their young people formed the back of the international slave trade, and many an African chief got fat and happy on the proceeds, with the collusion of Arab slave agents and Western buyers. If you feel the descendents of slaves should be compensated, then start with Africa itself, and the specific tribes involved in this business.

If you don't think there's a time span on compensating for land grabs, then you would have to move the world back to pre-history - migration, exploration, the overthrow of weaker clans by stronger ones, the introduction of boundaries and borders, has been going on across the globe for as long as we have written down our past. Where would you have it begin, and where would you have it end? And what purpose do you think it would serve?
 
Originally posted by krizon@Apr 18 2006, 11:32 AM
We'll join you in asking for compensation from the Vikings, the Romans, and the pesky Normans, then
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That's a capital idea.

How much do you think we'll get?

Although since I actually think that you are being ironic, what time period do you feel should have passed before any actions can be forgotten/forgiven?
 
Well, yes, I was being a weeeee bit ironic, Simmo! :D You pose a very, very difficult question (and I'm apologising sincerely to Kathy for our hijacking of her seals thread, although it does keep it going!). How could we, for example, compensate the people whose property was seized by the Nazis in WWII? Millions of Jewish homes, business premises, their household and personal goods, and their bank accounts, were seized. Given that in many cases, their children were also murdered, there was no-one left to have inherited the properties in the usual manner. So, while the Reich got richer than its wildest dreams with plunder, who should it rightfully return if not the actual physical goods to, then its monetary worth? And would it be its worth at the time, or its worth now?

Thinking about the various genocides (so many, one could weep) - how to compensate for the loss of a working husband or son, or for the loss of one's home or farm? WHO to compensate? The mother, the wife, the children - considering that in, for example, both Serb and Croat cases the families often all lived together?

Very, very difficult to say who should get what, and when. Is the Second World War too far away now for compensation? No, not according to the Chinese women who were captured and multiply-raped as sex slaves by the Japanese during the earlier Sino-Japanese war. Compensation for everything has to then be considered: for mutilation (the loss of one's eyes, lips, hands or legs in the Rwandan atrocities); for castration; for rape; for murder; the loss of a home, a livelihood, one's lands, one's animals, one's farm implements... the list is staggering, and endless.

I don't know, simmo. A best guess is right away, as soon as possible, allowing for the money to be available. However, we all know what bureacracy's like, and how many YEARS it would take to investigate every claim. Now, in Ireland and Scotland, there are the tragic histories of clearances and forced exiles. The English who took over those lands were often given them as gifts for aggressive loyalty to the Monarch. Should the Queen compensate for her ancestors making free with what was not in their gift to appropriate and donate? Interesting stuff. No easy blanket answer, I fear!
 
How about we just give out compensation to anyone who hasn't committed atrocities of one form or another at some point, and thus made it below the Japanese and the French in Homer's table of world scummyness.

Give all the money to the aborigines of the world!
 
:lol: Okay, simmo, I'll second that! It's darn tricky, though, I have to admit. The sort of thing which makes you glad you don't work for the UN...

... which reminds me of a wonderful Ronald Searle (St. Trinian's fame) cartoon when the UN was then the League of Nations: the scene is a guide taking tourists round the LoN building, opening the doors to the Council chamber, and proclaiming, "And here, ladies and gentlemen, is where the Council fights for peace!"

Of course, the scene was complete chaos, with papers and documents flying everywhere, as Council members laid into each other in a terrific brawl.
 
Originally posted by simmo@Apr 18 2006, 01:50 PM
How about we just give out compensation to anyone who hasn't committed atrocities of one form or another at some point,
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I haven't, how much do I get.
 
Anyone remember that episode of the West Wing where a leading black lawyer calmly demanded reperations running into the billions owing to the descendants of black slaves forcibly removed from Africa? The look on Josh's face when he realised he wasn't joking was priceless.
 
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