I am so disgusted with this that I am moving 11 domain names I own and manage to another registrar this weekend .
Why?
GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons is taking a lot of heat for the video, which details his recent elephant hunt. However, the CEO originally tried to frame the hunt as almost a “humanitarian” expedition. Many disagree.
From GOOD:
In the middle of the night, Parsons, along with his African guides, ambush and shoot what Parsons calls a “problem elephant”: “[Zimbabweans] have very little,” says Parsons. “Many die each year from starvation and one of the problems they have is the elephants, of which there are thousands and thousands, that trash many of their fields destroying the crops.”
Then the video gets really graphic, as Parsons records villagers who come out in the early morning to slaughter the dead animal, stripping it of its flesh. Oddly enough, this part, which is set to AC/DC’s “Hell’s Bells,” is almost a shameless plug for the company, zooming in at one point on the company’s logo.
GoDaddy.com CEO Bob Parsons’ Elephant Hunt Sparks Outrage (GRAPHIC VIDEO)
It is not because I am opposed to hunting. E.g. venison makes good eating. I grew up with a father and an uncle who hunted, and taught me. So that is not the issue. I am not a vegan. I am a happy omnivore. Supper last night was produced by me for wife and son, consisting of beef from northern Indiana Amish/Mennonite country, used in a Japanese wheat/buckwheat noodle and vegetable stir fry/steam finish dish. You would have loved it.
But I also learned that I was only to kill what I was going to eat, and that it was pretty unethical and sick just to kill anything that moved.
But what makes this situation even worse is this: At what point are we as a species going to wake up to the fact that maybe it is just not a good thing to wipe out every other frickin’ species on the planet just to get off on killing another animal?
For any science fiction fans among you, I would mention one of Arthur C. Clarke’s less known novels from the 50’s, “The Deep Range”, which grappled with these issues in regard to the seas and whales.
You would think at some point we would realize that we are on the cusp of creating the next great mass extinction event on planet Earth. We, human beings. Is it really necessary to pave the planet and wipe out any species that gets in our way? Will this really profit us as a species in the long run? This seems like a really dubious proposition to me.
There is little doubt left in the minds of professional biologists that Earth is currently faced with a mounting loss of species that threatens to rival the five great mass extinctions of the geological past. As long ago as 1993, Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson estimated that Earth is currently losing something on the order of 30,000 species per year — which breaks down to the even more daunting statistic of some three species per hour. Some biologists have begun to feel that this biodiversity crisis — this “Sixth Extinction” — is even more severe, and more imminent, than Wilson had supposed.
And even worse, when we are talking elephants, we are talking an endangered species that is also one of the most intelligent mammals on the planet. They communicate. They nurture their young.
I have always drawn the line at killing and eating animals that were so intelligent they verge on being able to talk back to me. That is a moral consideration for me.
Anyway, I have already identified another registrar, I just submitted requests at GoDaddy and have an email with the secret authorization code for each domain. Later this weekend I will unlock each domain, and initiate transfer process at the new domain registrar.
And Bob Parson’s can just go scr*w himself, and continue puffing himself up in videos with hot young women without my help (why this remark? See his blog at link below and you will understand).
If you want to read some really sad stuff, go to his personal blog and read the comments. Lots of mighty hunters just praising his manly killing skills. I am waiting to see if my contribution is censored or not.
