Fur flies over seal hunt video
(MAR. 20, 2008)
canada.com

There was more fur flying Thursday as the Newfoundland government sounded off on what it calls a "vile" video attack on Canadian sealers.

In the video, an unsuspecting driver gets out of his car and is hunted down and clubbed to death by hooded and masked men who steal his coat and run off.

It's a bloody scene with a pounding heavy metal track behind it.

Tom Rideout, the minister of fisheries and aquaculture, says the anti-sealing video is "a new low on the part of anti-sealing organizations."

"This particular attack is the most vile that I have ever seen myself in my almost 30 years in public life. It is completely indecent for this group of people, who have likely never even visited our province, to present such a disturbing depiction of sealers."

The video is distributed by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in Germany. It can be found at www.the-canadians.com.

The same site offers t-shirts for around $30 depicting a ghoulish sealer standing atop a mound of seal carcasses and threatening a whitecoat seal.

Rideout said the seal hunt is based on sound scientific evidence that shows healthy populations of seals and that the harvest is conducted in a humane manner.

PETA spokesmen were not available for comment.

Meanwhile, after depictions of human-on-human violence, now the seals are getting in on the act. Hunters beware - there's a new seal in town, and he's got a club.

An online game that bills itself as "a mission of mindless revenge" puts seal hunters on the receiving end for a change.

Clubby the Seal is an unabashedly violent game, the brainchild of U.S. animator Edmund McMillen.

Players take the part of Clubby, trekking across the frozen tundra and bashing their way "through armies of seal clubbers."

Along the way, they collect human "skins" and sell them on the black market.

Gamers describe it as "funny and violent."

"Nothing could be more glorious than a seal with a club destroying people," said one player on the game's website, www.newgrounds.com.