OPINION

Too much to bear

Thanks, Anchalee Kongrut, for posting that important article titled, Pity the bears held captive for their bile, (Opinion, Aug 2).

Causing extreme suffering for animals has been a cultural practice among Chinese for generations. It's bad enough to think that humans are superior to all other species (we're not), but even worse to cause extreme suffering to other species.

Do the Chinese do it with pandas? No, because pandas are cute-looking. Do the Chinese ingest ground-up dog penis instead of ground-up tiger penis to get hard-ons? No, because tigers are a fiercer predator than dogs so, in their profound ignorance, Chinese think tiger penis is powerful and dog penis has no value. Of course, any reasonably scientific-minded person knows that pulverised penis from any animal is just calcium, same as you or a squirrel has in its bones.

Similar for rhino horn. It's no different than the keratin which forms your fingernails or hair. Yet trying to change embedded ignorance of a thousand years is not easy. Message to Chinese: Go ahead and buy as much Viagra as you want, but please leave bears, rhinos, elephants and deer to roam free in the wild. Oh, what's that you say? You don't have any "wilderness" left for animals? Well, at least let them live peacefully in zoos.

An added note about bear bile: Openly displayed in the market at Tachilek, Myanmar (across the river from Mae Sai, Thailand), are dried bear bile sacks. They are dark grey and look like purse-sized flattened ticks. I even saw one vendor who was selling bear paws -- still fresh with flesh and blood glistening at the openings where they were hacked off the beast. I went to tell a local Myanmar policeman about it, but he just shrugged and said something like, "What can you do? Stuff happens."

According to your Learning section of Aug 2, there are 46 million Facebook users in Thailand. A breakdown of where these users are show that 30 million of these people are in Bangkok.

The last I heard there were only 10 million people living in Bangkok.

I can imagine that there are a million or so tourists in Bangkok at any one time possibly using Facebook, but who are the missing 19 million Facebook users?

Re: "Flood of old problems" and "Sonca not the only culprit behind floods" (Opinion, Aug 3).

It is refreshing to note that the Bangkok Post editorial and Khun Sirinya Wattanasukchai have correctly and effectively zeroed in on the main factors exacerbating flooding in the country rather than relying on standard knee-jerk reactions and flawed "conventional wisdom".

In the past, major flooding in Thailand has almost always been blamed on upland farmers and other "forest encroachers" and accusations that such mountain residents have deforested the uplands. "Illegal logging" has also been a convenient scapegoat.

While loss of forests contributes marginally to the severity of local flooding and certainly results in significant soil erosion, the real culprits leading to major widespread flooding are the filling in and occupation of waterways, ponds, wetlands and other water retention areas and poorly planned roads and infrastructure that block water flow.

It is a positive development that important opinion makers, such as Bangkok Post staff, point to the actual causes of flooding instead of heaping blame on weak, but largely blameless, upland farmers.

So our wonderful, wise, ineffable government, with its vastly superior intellect, intelligence and unimpeachable morals, has decided there are 3,726 pages on Facebook and YouTube which are illicit. These are pages that they have seen and decided that the general population in Thailand lacks the education, discernment and moral fibre to be allowed to see them.

What are these pages about? Why are we not allowed to view them? What information is so terrible that it must be hidden from us? What would happen if we viewed them (apart from being sent to jail of course?) Would the universe as we know it come to an end? Would Thailand as we know it come to an end? Questions, questions.

The FBI investigation of President Donald Trump for colluding with Russia has thus far not turned up any evidence. If there was significant evidence, it would have been promptly leaked to the mainstream media (with whom the FBI regularly colludes).

But what is the aim of this investigation? Collusion, in some instances, is a crime. Donald Trump is a person. If collusion with Russia is being sought, there are many examples of previous government officials engaging in illegal activities with Russia. It is a matter of public record Hillary Clinton facilitated the sale of 20% of US uranium reserves to the Russians. Thereafter the Clinton Foundation received significant donations from said Russians. That is de facto evidence of collusion.

But the Trump investigation is simply another demonstration of corrupt party politics running amok in Washington. There is no evidence after eight months, so one must ask what is the point of this expensive exercise continuing other than removing a US president from office?

Re: "Tsunami alert system 80% out of order" (BP, July 29).

This is a great shame for operators of those broken systems, but I am not much surprised because this is Thailand. Of course they should be serious about maintaining those systems to ensure that they are in good working condition at all times.

Independent warning systems should be renovated and combined into some daily use system. In doing so, the system can be checked frequently if they are serviceable.