Posted on 04/13/2008 9:40:19 AM PDT by george76
The captain and first officer of the anti-sealing ship the Farley Mowat were due to appear in court in Sydney, N.S., on Sunday, a day after their arrest off the west coast of Newfoundland.
They have been charged with interfering with the seal hunt after a confrontation with a Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker two weeks ago.
Their vessel was boarded and seized Saturday in the Gulf of St. Lawrence by RCMP officers, working with officials from the federal Fisheries Department and the coast guard...
Paul Watson of the international group Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, which owns the vessel, said its seizure and the arrests amount to an "act of war" because the ship is registered in the Netherlands and was in international waters.
However, Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn said the arrests were made within Canadian waters...
Hearn said the ship's crew failed to comply with warnings and continued to violate marine and fisheries regulations.
"The government of Canada has taken action to protect the safety and livelihoods of Canadian sealers by boarding and seizing the Farley Mowat to arrest its captain and chief officer for alleged violations of Canada's marine mammal regulations," ...
The minister said officers boarded the anti-sealing vessel after the ship ignored orders to go to port.
(Excerpt) Read more at cbc.ca ...
A freedom fighter? Since when do animals get top billing over humans? Have a disagreement over hunting, you don't try to kill people over it. So yes, Watson is a terrorist, who uses violence and the threat of violence to compel action by others, against the rule of law. Terrorize the seals - what bull. Might as well argue that Orcas terrorize them when they feed on the colonies.
“There’s nothing wrong with being a terrorist, as long as you win. Then you write the history.”
— Sierra Club board member Paul Watson, at the Animal Rights 2002 convention
A freedom fighter? Surely you jest.
He is a law breaker and common criminal and you trying to justify it speaks volumns.
seals are a CROP no different than trees or corn.
It does not matter what the end product is used for.
It seems these eccoterrorists were far more about piracy rather than legit protest.
these are the same type of kooks who endanger hunters in the USA.
Captain Watson left Greenpeace in 1977 and formed the US-based Sea Shepherd Conservation Society -- a vigilante environmentalist group that has sunk 10 ships since 1979.
.
Try hunting a bald eagle. Try hunting a bison. Try hunting your neighbor's dog. Then ask yourself your question again while you are in jail.
Why hunt a bald eagle when there's so many roadkills in the country - instead I'll simply get one from the National Eagle Repository. Bison's yummy, you can pick some up down at your local market, and over nine thousand dogs are shot in the United States each year according to one of the anti-gun groups. None of this has anything to do with animals getting top billing over man. The restrictions on hunting the bald eagle, while deceptive, don't deeply bother me, bison's long been a yummy treat, and your neighbor's dog is your neighbor's property - typically people go to jail for destroying property of others.
I'm failing to see how this has much of anything to do with you defending a terrorist and claiming he's a freedom fighter for the oppressed seals and underrepresented minority whales. Perhaps that's because even you can't manage to do it a second time.
Thanks for the post/ping/link. I never heard of this thug/criminal before today.
You keep claiming he is a terrorist. Mainstay reporting would have as an example of a terrorist a throat cutting, bomb throwing Muslim. They kill people. Who has Watson killed? Who has he terrorized? His ship has a berth in the United States. When he has been arrested, the authorities have released him. In Costa Rican they were embarrassed when they saw films of your right-to-work anyway they see fit fishermen finning sharks, an illegal activity. The sealing in Canada is all about penis's for the Chinese, furs for the society bitches, and beer money for the losers in the fishing boats. I have met enough fishermen to know that beer and drugs is what keeps them going out to sea.
Oh, and that passive-aggessive retort, "Perhaps that's because even you can't manage to do it a second time." is so liberal.
Its preferred methods?
Ramming and sinking fishing ships, throwing butyric acid on their decks, and firing machine guns. Watson argues that United Nations resolutions authorize him to commit violent acts.
But he regularly interferes with fisherman and hunters who are committing no crime.
.
“I have met enough fishermen to know that beer and drugs is what keeps them going out to sea.”
Good Lord, you have been watching WAY too many Walt Disney films.
Go out to sea deep sea fishing with the fishermen from Gloucester or New Bedford. If you don't take drugs now, you will then or you will lose your nerve.
You paint fishermen with a pretty broad brush. I’ll bet there are MANY more responsible fishermen than the ones you mention.
Also, could you please tell me what is the difference between Paul Watson and the Sea Shepherd group, and the folks below?
Anti-war thugs protest Easter Mass - Right Wing News (Conservative ...A group of anti-war protestors calling themselves “Catholic Schoolgirls ...... Assault, destruction of property, harrassment and invasion of privacy. ...
www.rightwingnews.com/mt331/2008/03/antiwar_thugs_protest_easter_m.php?
Watson is attempting to stop sex/fashiion addicts and the queers you want to compare him to from getting seal penis's and furs.
“The sealing in Canada is all about penis’s for the Chinese, furs for the society bitches, and beer money for the losers in the fishing boats. I have met enough fishermen to know that beer and drugs is what keeps them going out to sea.”
Any other hard-working rural resource industry workers you want to spew contempt for? Lumberjacks? Farmers? Prospectors? And you defend Watson and his tactics? Maybe you thing ELF are great guys too - after all they’re just destroying property and killing people to protect the lives of innocent animals.
Word to the wise: you’ll get a lot further with arguments that don’t involve screeching about the evil of trading in furs or whatever, or maligning whole groups of people. You think the seal hunt is wrong? Fine, that’s your right. But to claim that ramming and sinking ships (as the SSS itself claims it has done) to protect animals goes a bit far even for me, and I have little sympathy for whale hunting or shark-finning.
Interesting. The high seas are rural. I would never have thunk it.
The total allowable catch permitted by the Canadian government is 270,000.
Seal populations in Canada are approximately:
Harp Seals - 5.5 million
Hooded Seals - 590,000
Grey Seals - 300,000
http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/seal-phoque/faq_e.htm#1
Seal populations have nearly tripled since 1970. They aren't being hunted to extinction like your claims would make it seem. The Seal population is being properly managed.
What possible threat are the seals to man?
They aren't generally a threat to man. They are however being harvested as are fish and other game.
It's interesting you provide the wikipedia link, but ignore citation in the link supporting Watson. For example one citation says Costa Rican prosecutors dropped charges against Watson [after they saw the films of the fishermen ILLEGALLY finning sharks}.
Watson admits he has illegally attacked boats. Just because in that case the fishermen were also acting illegally does not excuse his actions in general. You're trying to rationalize criminal, terrorist activity.
I'm sure the hunters will start screaming about depriving them of their rights.
Considering that other than the rare exceptions, they are the ones obeying the law, and Watson is intentionally and illegally endangering their lives, they have every right to complain.
I don't see any right listed in the Constitution to kill animals for pleasure.
Yea, I'm sure that most of these Seal hunters just love to go out and kill seals in dangerous and extremely cold arctic climate. They do it for the sheer joy of it.
Admitting that they might have a legitimate reason to hunt seals, or even using accurate figures about seal populations does, support your goals, you misstate or ignore the facts.
That's because your cause is so important and all of us are too stupid to see how important it is if we were just shown the facts, so you need to make your cause more appealing. To bad if honesty and integrity are lost in the process.
The moralists will come out and tell me I am a hypocrite for eating cows. Cows are prey food. They need to be eaten to prevent them from eating all the vegetation. Seals are predators. They are on our side.
Yes, you're a hypocrite. Ever hear of the food chain? Almost every predator is also prey. A predator that is not also preyed upon by others animals is the very rare exception in nature. There aren't two sides, predator and prey.
Equating Watson to a terrorists is a stretch.
He advances his goals that he can not attain by legal or political means by terrorizing and threatening others. That makes him a terrorists. He doesn't use the same tactics as Islamic terrorists using suicide bombers, nor is he blatantly homicidal. But he's still a terrorist.
I think the commercial slaughter of seals and whales using modern technology is a rotten aspect of man.
Killing animals should be done as humanely as possible. Modern technology more often than not makes possible to be more humane.
You aren't making rational, well thought out arguments, you're making emotional ones.
It's at the same level as African poachers who kill Gorillas or the savage Muslims who torture an ancient [ENDANGERED] sea turtle before slitting it's throat.
That's a load of crap. These aren't poachers. If they are, Watson should turn over his evidence that they are poaching, and let the authorities prosecute them.
You say others shouldn't call Watson a terrorist, despite him clearly meeting the definition, because you don't like the connotation that his actions are similar to other, even more extreme terrorists. However, you are more than happy to try and associate people legally hunting seals with poachers a people needlessly torturing endangered animals.
Hypocrisy, rationalization, and misinformation seems to be your stock and trade in this post.
Why don't you try honestly depicting what the sealers are doing and stating your objections to it without trying to associate actions that haven't committed to them.
The workers are rural, not the resource - is that too complicated for you? I would certainly call many coastal communities of Newfoundland, PEI, or NS, where these sealers live, “rural.” Most of them don’t live in, or near, big cities. They go out to do this difficult, dangerous work to supplement their families’ incomes - certainly not for the fun of it. And, like most people involved in slaughtering animals as part of their profession, they probably don’t feel too much for the seals they’re killing. I would probably find it pretty appalling if I was out there - but I would probably find a slaughterhouse pretty appalling, too.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.