Commentary and Editorial

Official Apology to the Government of Canada

From Captain Alex Cornelissen

Dear Canadian Government,

I would like to apologize for the trouble we have caused you. I know that every year, you have wasted millions of dollars to keep an already dead industry alive. Every year, you have sent a fleet of ships out into the ice in Eastern Canada to make way for pathetic unemployed whining fishermen so they can kill som’. I know your helicopters are being used to haul beer and cigarettes to the sealers every time their boats get stuck in the ice.

I especially want to apologize for all those years in which we had the audacity to actually send one of our ships into the ice, and you had to spend even more money to have your coastguard and DFO show us who is the boss. And I particularly want to apologize for last year in which you had to send four icebreakers, two other coastguard vessels, two DFO airplanes, two military airplanes, numerous helicopters and a destroyer to stop our extremely dangerous video cameras (they are digital).

Apologies as well for having to spend a fortune to keep our retired vessel the Farley Mowat under 24 hour surveillance for the last 15 months. Sorry we left her in such a state of array, we asked the SWAT team if we could clean her up for you, but they refused. Sorry we had previously stripped her of everything of value, although I believe there are still some pretty lame DVD’s in the lounge, I am sure they will be to your liking. Sorry we had to let you pay a fortune in docking fees for a ship that seems to have turned into your worst nightmare.

I personally want to apologize for not being able to attend my court case, it was difficult to say the least being deported and banned for life and all. Although I was quite happy with that, as you see I live in Ecuador and don’t like to leave my home to visit banana republics. I am sorry for not being able to have a good laugh at the expense of those whining sealers when they talk about the most terrifying moments of their lives having to face our cameras.

But rest assured dear Canadian government: we will save you the trouble in the years to come because you have finally been exposed. With Europe closing the borders on your bloody industry you will have to eat a lot of throbbing seal hearts and seal flipper pie to keep it going. I am sorry I won’t have to come back to your country as I was quite enjoying your correctional facilities and had numerous good laughs over your ridiculous bureaucracy.

Kind regards,

Captain Alex Cornelissen

PS- I am looking forward to hearing what my sentence is going to be, as I have several bets running…

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For the Whales We Weep Before Forever We Sleep

Commentary by Captain Paul Watson

The sons of Adam descended upon the water
Without thought, devoid of love they began the slaughter
The children of Ahab baptized in hot gentle blood
Mercilessly seeking revenge for the ancient flood.

Funchal, Madeira, Portugal- I am writing this on a tropical hillside over-looking the Atlantic Ocean. Behind me is the Pestana Casino Park Hotel on the island of Madeira. The 61st annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) is over. The hundreds of delegates have departed the island like guilty shadows back to their respective nations, leaving a foul taste and stench in the air over Funchal, from yet another IWC meeting that accomplished absolutely nothing.

After a week spent observing delegates to the International Whaling Commission in Funchal, Madiera, I have come to recognize just what it is that is missing from this annual bureaucratic orgy of inaction:

Whales!

The talk around the bar in the evening or at the tables in the restaurant during meals is your usual banter about football, kids, politics, and the economy. I did not detect much concern for the whales. The African and Caribbean delegates in town on a Japanese funded junket in exchange for their votes were more interested in the night life, and most of the NGO’s were chit chatting about pretty much nothing.

Fear and Loathing in Madeira

Final Report from the 61st IWC Meeting

Commentary by Captain Paul Watson

It’s hard to believe that Dr. Sidney Holt is attending his 50th meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) here in Madeira, Portugal. From that very first meeting he attended in Cambridge in 1959 until this very strange, weird, and wacky whaling commission meeting today, he has seen a lifetime of frustrations, blatant greed, hysteria, hypocrisy, profound stupidity, awesome arrogance, and incredible ignorance. He has also observed the threads of consistency that has tied every IWC gathering together: ineffectiveness, posturing, bureaucratic nonsense, and confusion laid down on a patchwork foundation of grisly slaughter, greed, and self-interest.

The IWC has always been and continues to be an insane cruel joke, certainly cruel to the whales and if not for the agonizing suffering of these intelligent and gentle creatures, these annual affairs would be hilarious. Most of these clowns posing as delegates share the same macabre character traits of the infamous Joker. They talk with casual insensitivity about the murder of sentient beings whose brains are larger and more complex than their own. It’s like what an annual conference of Nazi concentration camp guards would have been like if Hitler had been victorious.

I can imagine discussions like the importance of lethal medical research and a population assessment of the Jewish and Gypsy populations and the effect of their consumption patterns on German beer supplies. Or, scientific panels to investigate if Jews actually feel pain and ways to make improvements for humane gas chambers. The type of delegates now attending the IWC meetings would be the same ones expected to condemn any measures to save Jews in established Jewish protection zones.

The Dr. Mengele wannabe’s in the Japanese Institute of Crap Cetacean Research are immune to the screams of dying pregnant whales. They measure and dissect whale fetuses with the same cold dispassionate professionalism as the butchers of Buchenwald displayed to the world only a mere year before the founding of the IWC.