Sea Shepherd PR

[Re: “Death and doubloons,” News, May 8] The story about the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society’s monitoring of the seal hunt in the Gulf of the St. Lawrence was as interesting for its apparent lack of impartiality as it was for its subject matter.

Your paper allocated ample ink to Sea Shepherd volunteer Shannon Mann’s account of the Sea Shepherd’s confrontations with the Canadian Coast Guard and the “predictably furious” local fishermen in Saint-Pierre. 

However, you either made no attempt to talk to the Coast Guard or the fishermen or failed to report that they declined to discuss the matter with you.

Fortunately, despite the lack of comments from those sources, Mann’s comments provide lots of unintended perspective. 

She said Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson stepped onto seal hunters’ home turf and called them “cigarette-smoking apes” and “sadistic, vicious killers.” 

If that’s true, he lost the support of many people who otherwise might have agreed with him. Unless his intent is to anger everybody instead of solving problems, Watson needs to take a long sabbatical by enrolling in a public relations course.

>>Joseph Owen

Paul Watson, calling sealers “sadistic, vicious killers,” will clearly not endear you to the people of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, or any people that engage in fishing-related activity for that matter.

But really, “cigarette-smoking apes”? Never mind that as a smoker I am offended, but it’s also clearly an insult to all apes, and a surprising one, given the SSCS’s history of defending animal rights.

I guess the SSCS will be hard-pressed to find many friendly ports free of fisherman, cigarette-smokers and apes. The third one may be pretty easy, but good luck with the first two.

Oh wait, I forgot. The Mounties “played right into their hands” by boarding their ship after they entered territorial waters and had previously rammed the Coast Guard, and as the author points out “the media loved it.”

Quite the PR coup indeed!

>>Peter Sutherland

Frankel vs. Finkelstein

[Re: “A cut below,” Letters, May15] Okay Frankel, now you’ve done it! Until now, I have frequently seen and, at times, even read a few of your diatribes, assuming that you were on the editorial staff of the Mirror, or that you were at least providing oral services to the editors in exchange for the seemingly unending space they provide your rants.

But now, you have finally come out of the closet as a “Goyimophobe!”—one who has a morbid hatred for non-Jews. Now I’m pissed. 

As an intact man, I take offence at your casting aspersions on the prepuces of over three quarters of the planet’s male population.

You can be a blatant Israel defender, no matter how heinous their behaviour is towards their indigenous population. That’s your right to free speech. But when you belittle one of your own with snide insults about his having a foreskin or not, you reveal your true self; a “Goy” hater!

Please tell me how that makes you any different from the anti-Semites among us?

It’s comments like this that make me think that the mohel should have taken off more than the most sensitive part of your dick.

As for where thoughts come from, yours emanate from a bit further back, just behind the testicles.

Suggestion: start your own blog, at least then, those who really want to read your harangues can opt to do so, thus leaving some more space to others.

>>Greg Tutko

Many of the Mirror’s pro-Palestinian readers have often used words such as “ethnic cleansing” to describe the “genocidal” practices carried out by the state of Israel.

Well, if Israel is committing “ethnic cleansing,” they’re doing a really poor job of it—since the Palestinian territories have one of the fastest growing populations in the world.

According to a recent census report published by the Guardian newspaper—not usually a “friend” of Israel—the Palestinian territories have one of the fastest growing populations in the world, with numbers surging 30 per cent in the past decade, while Israel’s population, grew a mere 5.17 per cent over the same period.

Well, so much for ethnic cleansing. Guess Zionists are both evil and incompetent.

>> Bossman

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