Twisted Logic, Twisted Conclusion

Canada's long-disputed seal hunt has now been officially placed under trade sanction by the European Union. All trade of seal pelts, oil, and meat have been banned by the European Union thanks to its craven submission to the propaganda power of the animal-rights lobby in Europe which politicians there see as potentially harmful to them come election time.

There is nothing particularly reasonable about the decision, it is reactive in nature, in recognition of the public's willingness to suspend belief in a humane seal hunt, practised in Canada.

The Canadian government intends to appeal the ban on seal products importation to the EU.
While it is true that aboriginal communities will be exempt from the ban there will be no way to adequately prove to the satisfaction of animal rights activists that seal product importation is solely the result of an aboriginal seal hunt. They too will be impacted by the ban, and most certainly subsistence seal hunters living in coastal communities will be harmed.

To follow this issue to its logical conclusion, shut down all abattoirs.

The federal government's anger over this move, long threatened, but now that it has arrived, no less surprising, will move it to appeal to the World Trade Organization, as it contravenes WTO guidelines. "Canada's hunt is humane, scientific and follows environmental rules of sustainability" announced Canada's International Trade Minister Stockwell Day during a news conference.

Furthermore, the EU's zeal in banning seal products is surprising when viewed in the context of real world and international concerns.

Ranking European Union members do a brisk business with the Islamic Republic of Iran whose dangerously incendiary and oft-stated intention to commit an act of existential aggression against a member-state of the United Nations - one which has friendly relations with its democratic peers in the European Union - identifies the EU's values as puzzlingly hypocritical at the very least.

Fundamentalist theocratic and militaristic Iran has defied the international community and the United Nations in its dismissal of demands that it cease working on nuclear adventurism for the purpose of attaining nuclear weapons. At the same time that it thumbs its Islamist nose at the UN and its nuclear-watchdog, it promises to annihilate Israel. The world has witnessed the recent quasi-election for president in Iran with an utterly corrupted outcome.

No country nor its legislative body is ignorant of the fact that Iran is a murderously repressive state, one that tyrannically oppresses its population, uses sharia law to loosely apply the deterrent of capital punishment, routinely violates the human rights of women, homosexuals, political dissenters and minority religions.

Yet countries of the European Union see nothing amiss in their multi-national electronics companies, their oil refining conglomerates doing business with the country.

What a peculiar double standard. The European Union and its members states have little to feel superior about when it comes to demonstrating their collective ethics and principles.