Man, oh, man...

Reader-submitted question: do people kill seals because people think its the best way to make their money?

No, they do it because they are sadistic sonsabitches who just love to hurt cute baby animals. Keep your kittens away from sealers. They actually don't care if they kill the seals at all. You can tell because sometimes after a thwack on the head, the animals will keep moving. Obviously, they are still alive, and the psychos just love it. They like nothing better than walking in pools of blood. It's like a murder fantasy, except that they actually get to live it out.

They say they do it for money, but really, it's because they are pure, unadulterated evil. Who else would kill baby seals?

OK, I'm not being fair. This was a sincere question, and I'm just making fun of it. My dear reader, I have written quite a lot about the seal hunt. You can find all of my posts on the topic here (this post will be at the top, so just scroll down). I remain convinced that if you really want to stop the seal hunt, you should pay sealers to sit at home and NOT kill seals. This would shut down the hunt without the need for consultants, publicity stunts or expensive ad buys. And that's exactly why PETA will never do it.

It keeps going and going and going and going....

One day when I was about nine years old, my father killed all, or almost all, of the chickens in our coop.

Although my brothers, the capitalist and philosopher king, actually helped with the slaughter, I couldn't bear it. One of them brought the chickens out of the coop two at a time, one in each hand. My dad chopped their heads off and hung them upside down to bleed out. The other helped my mom gut them. I remember the pile of scaly yellow chicken feet.

Chickens do not run around when their heads are cut off. I didn't watch the whole thing -- I mostly cowered in the corner with my eyes covered -- but I did see enough to reassure you that they don't run. They do flop around quite a bit, though, and then the headless corpses get very still.

It was all very horrible. I'm sure the ground was stained with blood. But it was a good lesson for all of us: if we are going to eat meat, animals have to die. I can't excuse people who kill animals for sport or who waste parts of animals.

Regular readers know where I'm going with this.

The latest news is that the premiers of Newfoundland and Nunavut are asking the federal government to ban the use of hakapiks in the seal hunt.

Hakapiks aren't nice, but they are very useful to the minority of sealers who use them to kill seals. One end is used to crush the seal's skull, killing it instantly. The other side has a spike that can be used to drag the carcass along the ice.

Yeah, it's pretty awful to think about it.

Most sealers don't kill seals with a hakapik, but it has become an enduring image of brutality. Danny Williams and Paul Okalik are hoping that by banning its use, the European Union will not ban Canadian seal products in an upcoming vote.

I'm not convinced that this will work. Anti-sealing protesters don't spend much time worrying about Canadian laws. They still pretend that whitecoats are killed. Their main goal is to draw attention to themselves and raise money, and they're not shy about breaking our laws to meet that goal. The point is not to be reasonable or honest about what actually happens out on the ice.

I've seen photos of baby seals all my life in anti-sealing propaganda. They're powerful images, and so are photos of hakapiks. Admit it: you shuddered at the sight of that spike. The activists will never stop using that image. They have plenty of footage of it being used, and there is no reason for them to stop.

So while I applaud Premiers Williams and Okalik for trying to meet their critics halfway, this is not really about the hakapik. The activists aren't trying to get sealers to stop using this tool: most seals are shot to death, anyway. They're trying to get money out of your pocket.

I'm going to do these all at once

Reader-submitted question: Is it really illegal to kill baby seals in Canada?

Yes. It's illegal to sell, trade or barter the pelts of baby seals. PETA is lying to you. Nobody is killing those beautiful white baby seals you saw in that video.

Reader-submitted question: Do Canadian sealers skin seals alive?

No. They can't skin live seals. And they can't leave the animals to choke in their own blood, either. They have to make sure the seals are dead right away. If it turns out that one is still alive, they have to make sure it dies. They can either check to make sure the skull is crushed or do a blink test: that means that they touch the eyeball. If the seal blinks, it needs another whack on the head.

Reader-submitted question: Do seals get whacked on the head right there on the ice where the babies are?

It depends. Seals can't be hunted in the whelping patch, even if only adults are killed. But after a certain amount of time goes by and the young seals lose their white pelts, they can be killed on the ice. They are not all whacked on the head, although that gets all of the attention because it seems a lot more brutal than shooting. Seals can be killed with a club, a gun or a hakapik -- a club with a spike on the end.

Reader-submitted complaint: That's horrible.

You're right. It's not very nice to think about the way any animal is killed, especially during large-scale commercial slaughters.

"Tell Gucci to stop clubbing baby seals"

Today's episode of Little Miss Know-it-All: Propaganda.

There's been a lot of talk in the northern blogosphere lately about PETA's disingenuous efforts to take down the sealing industry. I've been pretty clear that I think they're in the wrong. But I have to say that they definitely know what they're doing.

PETA's annual campaigns are not about saving baby seals. They haven't been for years. Their annual campaigns are about raising money, and they're pretty successful.

You see, it's illegal to kill whitecoat pups. The video footage PETA provides to news agencies makes it look like sealers are clubbing pups right now, but the footage was shot decades ago. Most seals aren't clubbed, either; they're killed with a single bullet. They are, however, often dragged across the ice with a large hook after they are killed, and that doesn't look very nice on TV.

Seals are not skinned alive. This one doesn't even make sense. A sealer who's just after an animal's skin would not risk damage to the skin by trying to take it off a living animal if a whack on the head would stop the flailing. (See, PETA doesn't have a monopoly on gruesome discussions.)

But this is not and never was about the facts. That baby seal on a pristine ice floe is a pretty amazing image, and blood shows up really well on ice. All of the killing takes place in a few weeks, so the corpses pile up quickly. The sealers never had a chance once PETA figured out they could use whitecoats to raise money.

You see, there are many, many animals that are treated worse than seals. They live terrible lives and die terrible deaths. I'm thinking specifically of chickens, but any animal that lives on a large farm will do. Chickens don't bring in donations. City people eat chickens. They don't want to hear about their sweat-shop eggs. It's much easier to ask Newfoundlanders to give up their livelihood than to stop eating eggs.

Did you know that live male baby chicks are thrown into grinders and turned into food for other animals? Did you know that chickens will literally peck each other to death? Did you know that they live in horrendous conditions and that blood pours all over the slaughterhouse floor? Yeah, that's pretty horrible, and it all really happens. It's too bad they're not pretty on TV, and it's too bad that you could actually do something about it by just refusing to eat chicken or eggs instead of giving money to an animal-rights organization. Obviously, chickens can't be the face of a fundraising campaign.

PETA is not trying to be fair. They never are. They are trying to get you to donate money, so they can hire more staff to convince you to donate even more money. It's all about self-interest, and I don't blame them for wanting more money. I want more money, too. I only blame them for lying to you.

PETA has some good ads. I especially like the ones that are obviously supposed to be funny, like this series. They're well-written and make you think. The sealing ads, on the other hand, are not about making you think. If you actually thought about the sealing hunt, you would realise that PETA's been lying to you for years, and you would stop giving them money. They can't have that.