OPINION

No to navy salvage

Re: "Vessel yet to be salvaged", (BP, March 30).

The navy continues to seek 200 million baht for the salvage of the sunken HTMS Sukhothai, but your story makes no mention of why the navy sees the need to salvage this vessel.

Even if the vessel is salvageable and can be made seaworthy again, which is highly doubtful -- where are you going to find the men to crew it, given even educated Thais' profound belief in ghosts and spirits?

Unless the navy can come up with the most convincing reason why Thai taxpayers should shell out this huge sum of money, HTMS Sukhothai should be left to rest on the ocean floor as a memorial to the 24 sailors and the other five who remain missing (and are surely also dead), in much the same way as USS Arizona and USS Utah are memorials to those killed in the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbour.

Be kind to elephants

Re: "Don't ride elephants", (PostBag, March 25) and "Pattaya honours elephants as part of their heritage", (BP, March 14).

Riding elephants is not honouring them. When they are trained to be submissive for riding and circus performances, there is a cruel process called "broken spirit", or phajaan in Thai, which means "breaking the love between" (referring to the love between a baby elephant and his or her mother).

Still-nursing baby elephants are roped around their four legs, dragged away from their mothers and immobilised in cages. Further on, they're punished every time they try to be instinctive and natural in their behaviour until their spirits are broken finally, and they become obedient.

What everyone can do is refuse to support the elephant riding and circus industries.

A case of dog vs man

Re: "Animal moral", (PostBag, March 19).

I wonder to whom Eric Bahrt's words that "the world would be better if we were less arrogant and more humane" are addressed after having stated that his dog is morally higher than most people he has known? I certainly do not know him.

Alternative outlook

Re: "Healthy options?" (PostBag, March 25).

Although Jayut Jayanandana is obviously not trained in medicine, he makes two excellent points. Allopathic medicine, which dominates in Western countries and increasingly globally, is extremely costly, is overly focused on alleviating symptoms, and, due to profit-driven obsessions with pharmaceutical treatment, is a leading cause of death.

Western medicine, combined with the agrochemical cartel and its handmaiden -- the processed food industry is the leading cause of death and disability in the developed world. More than 90% of Americans are metabolically disabled, addicted to sugar and are either prediabetic or diabetic. More than half of what they eat bears no resemblance to real food. Insulin resistance which is associated with the consumption of sugar-laden, highly processed food, causes many common cancers.

Mr Jayut also rightly questioned whether Health Minister Anutin is fit for the job and wonders why the vaccine debacle is a taboo topic for Thai media. Apparently, the answers to these important questions await the advent of a society which values freedom of speech more than the present one does.

Zero apologies

Re: "Beware of boredom", (PostBag, March 30).

I will never in a million years apologise to David Brown for fighting over and over again for the suffering of animals and human rights. I know that Brown knows I'm right not to contribute to the atrocities committed against farm animals, and it eats him up, pun intended, that unlike me, he's not man enough to live by his convictions.

What's boring is not my condemnation of cruelty; all social change occurred as a result of "continuously fighting for what's right" [amid] obsessive vicious personal attacks.

Cracked record

Re: "Beware of boredom", (PostBag, March 30).

With some letters, you can identify the writer without having to see the signature. They have become so repetitive and predictable. The proverbial cracked record, as the saying goes.

Speaking bluntly

Re: "Beware of boredom", (PostBag, March 30).

Whilst not entirely disagreeing with David Brown's concerns, to be fair, if the Post continues to publish stories on the same issues, it is not unreasonable that the same responses be made. Since, for example, Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha's government persists in unjustly arresting and imprisoning Thais for expressing honest, healthy debates, there is a call for Burin Kantabutra to repeat his accurate observation that on one occasion, His Majesty King Bhumipol Adulyadej the Great truly did ever so mildly voice some gentle objections to the injustice being perpetrated in his name by that Thai criminal law.

Any righteous person, as Mr Kantabutra's regular contributions clearly prove him to be, would speak out bluntly and regularly against such abuse, would they not?

Paradise no more

Re: "Koh Larn drawing 10,000 tourists a day", (Business, March 15).

This is something that continues to puzzle me. Who wants to spend a considerable amount of money visiting this country when they are expected to co-exist with fellow loud tourists cheek by jowl in overpriced accommodation in conjunction with other disamenities such as a toxic atmosphere and noise pollution? As well as over-priced food?

But I am spoiled as I wistfully remember Karon Beach in Phuket in the early 1980s. A few little basic bungalows scattered on the jungly hillside (genny cut out at midnight, thus amplifying exotic forest noises), pristine beach and sea without a tourist in sight and only two simple eateries dispensing delicious fresh seafood and refreshments at jaw-droppingly low prices with beaming smiles. Even an offer to accompany local fishermen at dawn once, which I eagerly accepted.

No hotels, malls, condos, bars, demimondaines and the likes they attract (tip o' the hat Bernard), banana boats etc, that have permanently ruined a former paradise and its ecology.

At that time, a 14-hour bus ride from Bangkok, but an adventure, and oh the glory when glimpses of the turquoise sea appeared through the rubber plantations as one neared the destination via the undulating roads. But I am being a silly old fool because the god of development and his/her worshippers have engineered change for the better of everyone in the guise of infrastructure improvement and other abominations. At least I have my wonderful memories.

Acts of insolence

Re: "Man arrested for defacing temple wall", (BP, March 30).

I must measure my words and be very clear.

Regardless of if your political message is, "112", or your political message is "From Mona Lisa to The Scream: Climate change activists protest by defacing art," Thai army chief Narongpan Jittkaewtae is quite correct in asserting that people should not "want" or (more pointedly) act to intentionally deface or destroy things held sacred by much of any society in order to make a passing political point of the era. However, that leads me to a few questions.

First, why hasn't the army chief marched into previous high schools and universities, I and numerous foreign teachers have worked at and confronted the administration of those schools for failing to correct the defacement of public portraits of our current King, which has been going on since at least 2019 and were left to hang (as undoubtedly captured on numerous student phone photos) for up to almost an entire school year at a time? Indeed, there were many foreign teachers who complained, but nothing was done.

I condemn Mr Suttawee's actions, and they are just as wrong as radical European climate activists who destroy historic art. However, these actions are regrettably no longer uncommon, and I fail to understand why "patriotic" Thai educators did nothing to correct similar graffiti at schools.

So, in Mr Suttawee's defence [and photos exist to prove my claims which I can send to the newspaper, or students can], if these mixed messages are what modern Thai educators are teaching Thai students, and if European "climate activist" teachers do much the same with this impressionable generation, why should the new generation really only be the ones put into jail when those who taught them [in this case their Thai teachers who allowed similar events to unfold for years] walk free of any punishment?