By JOHN TEEL
Special to the Courier Press
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
I shudder at the thought of Sarah Palin as vice president because I live in Alaska and know how violently misaligned Alaskan culture is with the rest of the United States. Not only is there an entire country physically separating Alaska from the United States, but there is a cultural divide just as wide.
Palin governs a culture stuck in the 19th century. Although she has an 80 percent approval rating as governor, keep in mind that most Alaskans are very different from most people in the United States.
Nearly everyone in Alaska owns several guns, enjoys trophy hunting, and thinks we should drill for oil anywhere and everywhere. In Alaska many people still use outhouses, rarely bathe or comb their hair, and it’s normal not to have electricity and running water. Does this sound like you and your family?
If New York City had the population density of Alaska, there would be one person living on Manhattan Island. Alaska is like no other state, and in most regards it’s a foreign country with a foreign culture.
Alaska was colonized by greedy people who wanted to get rich fast through the consumption of natural resources (minerals, wildlife and oil). Little has changed in a hundred years, and every industry in Alaska still exploits the land, sea or wildlife.
Natural resource extraction is the backbone of Alaska, and it runs through every aspect of Alaskan life. Palin represents the modern face of these pioneer day interests.
Let me highlight some of Palin’s atrocities occurring right now in Alaska:
Palin offered a bounty of $150 for each right front leg of freshly killed wolves; Palin supports aerial hunting of wolves and bears, even though Alaskans voted twice to ban it; Palin used $400,000 of state money to fund a media campaign supporting aerial hunting; Palin is a champion for big oil and supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; Palin believes man-made global warming is a farce; and Palin opposes listing polar bears as an endangered species and is suing the federal government over it because she thinks it will limit her oil exploitation.
The list of her atrocities to the natural world goes on and on.
It is not just a vehement disregard for the environment that makes Palin’s policies so horrific. Palin believes that creationism should be taught in public schools; Palin opposes abortion even in cases of rape and incest; and Palin is currently under investigation in Alaska for abuse of power.
If Palin ever becomes president, we can kiss the natural world goodbye, along with the freedom we treasure so much in this country. Palin is bad for the planet and bad for America.
John Teel of Homer, Alaska, is a native of Evansville. He is an engineer and wildlife advocate. For more information, visit his Web site, GrizzlyBay.org.
So I checked out GrizzlyBay.org, and found the Sarah Palin page, which includes videos & pictures I’ve seen and probably already posted. Below are three I haven’t.
GOP vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin has come under fire from environmental and animal activists for her positions on drilling and hunting in Alaska. John Blackstone reports from Anchorage.
I’m posting this not only for the more-or-less known reasons, but for a reason I just heard about for the first time this month — that 14 MILLION TONS of wild caught fish are used in livestock feed every year!
[See Fish and pigs and chickens, oh my!
Farm animals consume 17 percent of wild-caught fish.]
And that some species are caught before they are old enough to reproduce. So their populations may not recover. I think that irresponsible and unsustainable use ought to be an alarming concern to anyone who cares about the collapse of the world’s fisheries and the potential mass extinction of all species who depend on fish to survive.
What are we doing, feeding fish to pigs & chickens?!
(Doesn’t livestock get enough to eat, with 70% of the world’s grain that they use up, and that we cut down rain forests to grow it?!)
“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress
can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”
— Gandhi
Matthew Scully, who (ironically) wrote Sarah Palin’s speech which made her so wildly popular, also wrote this article during the last presidential campaign: “Sportsmen” for Bush and Kerry. It’s worth reading again now, when looking at what candidates do to win the support of the pro-gun, pro-hunting voting blocs. And Palin doesn’t have to pretend to enjoy killing animals for votes. It is part of her unapologetic resume. I wonder what Matthew thinks of Sarah’s trophy hunting and ordering of the aerial gunning of wolves and bears.
“The Palin-Scully pairing is anything but a guaranteed fit, though. Palin is known as an avid hunter; Scully is best known for his vigorous defense of animal rights. A vegetarian who is regularly critical of the NRA and much of the hunting community, he is a passionate advocate for doing away with the more brutal versions of blood-sport, including aerial hunting, which Palin supports.”
My original problem with Sarah Palin is that she’s an animal killer.
Chillin’ amid the dead ones.
She doesn’t represent my views or values. And I believe her to be more conservative than George Bush, which makes her pretty scary — being potentially one heartbeat away from the presidency, if McCain were to win. (She sued the Bush Administration for listing polar bears as an endangered species, apparently because it would get in the way of oil drilling. See the last link below, for The Episcopal Church’s position on drilling in the ANWR.)
I can see that Palin epitomizes the conservatives’ best hope to protect their interests and their worst stereotype of “God, Guns, Guts” — a “Pro-Life killer” who is anti-abortion but enjoys hunting and fishing, and is a member of the NRA — pro-drilling, pro-nuclear power, apparently pro-Iditarod — and as I learned last week, pro-aerial gunning of Alaska’s wildlife, etc.
But I found this picture on a forum board, and felt the need to post it here:
As the poster said, “Nice dead animals on your shoulders.” I wonder if she killed them, herself.
Reading on, on the forum board, I decided to find the original source for this:
Shocking Choice by John McCain
WASHINGTON– Senator John McCain just announced his choice for running mate: Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska. To follow is a statement by Rodger Schlickeisen, president of Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund.
“Senator McCain’s choice for a running mate is beyond belief. By choosing Sarah Palin, McCain has clearly made a decision to continue the Bush legacy of destructive environmental policies.
“Sarah Palin, whose husband works for BP, has repeatedly put special interests first when it comes to the environment. In her scant two years as governor, she has lobbied aggressively to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, pushed for more drilling off of Alaska’s coasts, and put special interests above science. Ms. Palin has made it clear through her actions that she is unwilling to do even as much as the Bush administration to address the impacts of global warming. Her most recent effort has been to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to remove the polar bear from the endangered species list, putting Big Oil before sound science. As unbelievable as this may sound, this actually puts her to the right of the Bush administration.
“This is Senator McCain’s first significant choice in building his executive team and it’s a bad one. It has to raise serious doubts in the minds of voters about John McCain’s commitment to conservation, to addressing the impacts of global warming and to ensuring our country ends its dependency on oil.”
###
The Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund (www.defendersactionfund.org) provides a powerful voice to Americans who value our conservation heritage. Through grassroots lobbying, issue advocacy and political campaigns, the Action Fund champions those laws and lawmakers that protect wildlife and wild places while working against those that do them harm.
This may very well be the election where animal advocates, environmentalists and anyone concerned about protecting wildlife could impact an election, based on their issues. But who will inform them? (The Humane Society of the United States has “10 million members and constituents”. How many members do the other organizations have? I know they can’t endorse, but they can put out the information.) Maybe the Obama campaign will….
For environmentalists, conservationists, animal people, etc., the choice is clear….
Today, someone found my site on a Google search for “Sarah Palin animal cruelty”. Google brings up a lot of sites with commentary that I didn’t list earlier above. Check out what comes up on Google.
The Criminal Cruelty of Governor Sarah Palin
Also, Huffington Post has a lot of interesting articles.
Here are a few. When I have time, I’ll make them hyperlinks. For now, I’m just going to copy & paste what I collected:
McCain’s New Palin Strategy: Blame The Media
Ironically, “The speech was written by Matthew Scully, who met Palin for the first time last week.” Ironic, because he is the author of Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy. I appreciate his sarcastic style more, when he’s writing about animal abusers/exploiters. But hey, the liberals can be just as sarcastic.
In large part America is tired of fire breathing partisanship. They have seen the 50+1 percent presidency of Bush devolve into a 24% presidency. People, especially those in the middle, realize that a president that every day is focused on “winning” the base turns out to be a loser with people in the middle and in the other party. It is not a way to govern a nation — and it stymies the effectiveness of the presidency. People like Reagan and Clinton had presidencies that worked for better or worse because they hadn’t written off half of the country on inauguration day.
For those who needed reminding, the Republican convention has done the job. Mission accomplished.
“Sarah Palin supports shooting wolves from planes. Palin promised to pay $150 for each left leg of a freshly killed wolf.”
I’ll reserve my comments (except that I’m reminded of Herod or Hitler ordering the killing of the innocents). But this is basically why I chose to devote space to her.
Even hunters with any kind of conscience should have a problem with this form of hunting, just as they do with canned hunts of that on-line hunting site that was in the news a year or so ago.
I’ll bet Sarah’s speech writer would have a problem with it, too.
Isn’t Alaska big enough to share with the wildlife?
(Disclaimer and disclosure: This is my personal blog. I’m a nobody. And I’m not speaking on behalf of any organization or institution that I belong to. And freedom of speech is still allowed in this country, just like “the right to bear arms” is. The only people who should have a problem with my views are animal killers who want to justify their cruelty-of-choice. And I don’t care what they think. I did remove my “Vote Obama/Biden” lines, though, so as not to be perceived as partisan, or a “surrogate”. In reality, I’m not. I’m for the animals and the environment, and have to go with the least-harmful choice. I also want to point out that I’m a Christian, who disagrees with the politically-minded Christian Right “extremists”.)
“When the voice of God is invoked
on behalf of those
who have no voice,
it is time to listen.
But when the name of God is used
to benefit the interests
of those who are speaking,
it is time to be very careful.”
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