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Secrets of Thailand’s Elephant Tourism Exposed
Chiangrai Times – The Duchess of Cornwall Camilla Parker Bowles brother tells how baby elephants are brutally starved and tortured. There are few things more adorable than a baby elephant. Little more than 3ft tall and naturally curious, they are the undisputed stars of the scores of elephant camps created in the forests of Thailand to offer tourists the opportunity to get close to the world’s largest land animals.
For many of the 850,000 Britons who go on holiday to Thailand every year, a trip to an elephant park is an unmissable part of their trip.
While some are doing good work, the vast majority of elephant camps are commercial enterprises, making money from tourists keen to have their photos taken with the young ones, bathing with the elephants or riding them, or watching them paint.
Some camps even dress up their elephants and have them perform unnatural and demeaning tricks, all in the name of entertainment.
Broken spirit: A helpless baby elephant endures a brutal ritual to prepare it for saleBut beyond the happy smiles of tourists posing with elephants, there is a hidden dark reality, of murder, smuggling and torture for the calves on show.
The booming Thai tourist industry is fueling a huge illegal trade in baby elephants that are taken from the wild in Burma, beaten, starved and tortured to break their spirit before being paraded in front of fee-paying holidaymakers.
The reports we have recently received indicate that at least 50 to 100 elephant calves are still being taken from the forests of Burma every year to supply the tourist camps.
Even worse, it is estimated that for every calf smuggled across the country’s 1,200-mile border with Thailand, up to five adult female and adolescent elephants from the calf’s immediate family group are gunned down in cold blood.
The forests of Burma are one of the last strongholds for Asian elephants and second only to India.
But such is the scale of the trade, it is thought that the endangered wild elephant population there – estimated at up to 5,000 individuals – could be wiped out or damaged beyond repair within ten years or so.
A decade ago, I helped launch a conservation charity, Elephant Family, in an effort to save the Asian elephant, which has lost up to 90 per cent of its population in the past 100 years.
While African elephants and ivory have dominated discussions on conservation, very little attention has been given to the Asian elephant.
Mark Shand and the elephant called TaraThe Asian elephant is facing extinction and is listed as ‘endangered’ on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List, the world’s most comprehensive inventory of the conservation status of species.
With an estimated 25,000 to 35,000 left in the wild, there is roughly one Asian elephant to every 20 African elephants.
While ivory poaching has recently escalated to alarming levels again, threatening many African elephant populations, the crisis facing their Asian relatives is still being overlooked – something we’ve set out to change.
Despite what some are claiming, Elephant Family has recently received disturbing reports that the illegal and brutal cross-border trade in endangered wild Asian elephants continues to thrive.
And now we have collaborated with The Ecologist Film Unit and Link TV on a shocking new documentary film that lays the trade bare.
Working with undercover operatives, the film includes interviews with elephant experts, undercover researchers and representatives of the Thai government.
It also includes harrowing clandestine footage of elephant calves being mistreated and tortured along the Thai-Burma border.
Many of the people who were interviewed for the film and provided the undercover footage did so at great risk, and continue to put their lives on the line to fight this trade.
The film tells the story of the trade – illegal in both Burma and Thailand – in elephants from the remote and mountainous forests that straddle the Thai border.
Entire families of elephants are routinely being rounded up and the adults shot dead so that babies can be dragged back to Thailand illegally.
Undercover cameras filmed the elephants as they endured the dreaded phajaan, a cruel, spirit-breaking ritual where the baby calves will be tied up, with no food and water, and beaten relentlessly for days on end. It is pure torture and according to experts we spoke to, very often the calves will die from their injuries or from stress, starvation or the sheer heartbreak of seeing their family killed in front of their eyes.
After they have been taught to be afraid of humans, the calves that do survive are smuggled across Thailand. When they reach the tourist elephant parks, many of them will be chained to a surrogate mother in an attempt to suggest they have been bred in captivity.
Telltale signs can be a complete lack of bonding between ‘mother’ and calf, the inability of a calf to suckle (because the ‘mother’ is not actually producing milk), as well as the scars from their horrific training.
Mark Shand helped launch a conservation charity a decade ago to save the Asian elephantSome camps even try to present unrelated calves as elephant twins alongside their bogus mother. This is almost always a double deception as elephant twins are incredibly rare.
The current market price for a healthy broken-in baby elephant is £14,000 to £20,000 and with the rapid growth of tourism and demand for elephants in entertainment – we calculate the tourism industry in Thailand employs up to 2,000 elephants – there are strong incentives for the trade.
As Burma increasingly opens up to the rest of the world, there are fears that the growth of the tourist industry there could be disastrous for the country’s remaining wild elephants.
The Thai government is eager to claim it has solved the problem, but the intelligence, testimonies and images included in the film and shot in recent months overwhelmingly suggest that the trade still continues.
Earlier this year, Thai enforcement officials launched a nationwide crackdown on elephant camps in response to a series of poaching incidents. Unregistered (and therefore illegal, and potentially wild-caught) elephants were confiscated.
However, to have been truly effective, the checks should have been conducted on all captive elephant facilities with little or no warning, to prevent any unregistered elephants being moved.
Some of the checks were reported to have been unnecessarily heavy-handed, particularly on those facilities that had been critical of the government’s handling of poaching incidents and the trade in live elephants.
Our latest information suggests the increased enforcement activity has simply pushed the trade further underground. Traditional trade routes used to transport elephants have now changed and holding sites that are normally used have also been relocated.
Sources and informants reported in April and June this year that wild capture was still being widely conducted, but that calves are now being stockpiled on Burma’s border while traders wait for an opportunity to smuggle them into Thailand.
The lack of data on the live trade has been the foremost constraint in efforts to tackle it to date. While there are indications that it is increasing, its highly political and criminal nature have made the gathering of comprehensive data incredibly difficult, as has the recent crackdown.
Yet Elephant Family’s sources indicate that significant numbers of wild-caught elephants continue to enter Thailand from Burma. In the past year, 26 calves have been observed in just five sites along the border.
Over a similar time frame, a further 51 elephants either known to have come from the wild, or showing all the visual indicators to suggest that has been the case, have been recorded in Thai camps or being traded at the Surin elephant festival in November.
Elephant Family believes that these figures are just a fraction of the actual numbers. Conservation campaigners, including Elephant Family, are urging the Thai government to review its laws and make it more difficult for wild-caught calves to be so easily absorbed into the captive population.
Making it a legal requirement to register calves within two weeks of their birth in captivity would be a simple step to overcoming one of the greatest loopholes. At the moment, they do not have to be registered until they are eight.
A rigorous and watertight registration scheme should be put in place for all elephants in Thailand – young and old alike. This should be backed up with a DNA database, something that the Thai government set out to do earlier this year but on which it has been unable to make much progress.
Much tighter border controls between Burma and Thailand and stringent penalties for those involved in the trade, including corrupt government officials, are also essential.
Until these steps are taken, it is not possible to say which camps tourists should or should not visit. But one thing I want to make clear to anyone planning on travelling to Thailand is that we’re not calling for a boycott of the camps, which would be disastrous for elephants because the camps rely on tourist income to feed and care for them.
Tourists should instead report any concerns they may have to their hotel or tour operator, and otherwise support our efforts for change if they want to make a difference.
This illegal elephant trade meanwhile also contravenes the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Fauna and Flora (CITES), of which both Burma and Thailand are members.
With Thailand hosting the next CITES conference in March 2013, it is vital that the Thai government is encouraged to implement and enforce these simple measures that could put an end to the trade.
One thing is for sure, though: if Thailand’s brutal baby elephant trade is not ended soon, Asia’s last remaining populations of wild elephants in Burma may be lost forever. All for the sake of a tourist photo-opportunity.- By Mark Shand
To save baby elephants from the tourist trade and support Elephant Family’s vital work, donate at www.elephantfamily.org/donate. Baby Elephant Smuggling Exposed: How Thailand’s Tourist Industry Is Driving A Brutal Trade In Baby Elephants was made by the Ecologist Film Unit in association with Link TV and Elephant Family. It can be viewed online at linktv.org /elephantsmuggling.
A recent report indicates that since Trudeau’s announcement of his gun buyback program four years ago, almost none of the banned firearms have been surrendered.
The federal government plans to purchase 2,063 firearm models from retailers following the enactment of Bill C-21, which amends various Acts and introduces certain consequential changes related to firearms. It was granted royal assent on December 15 of last year.
This ban immediately criminalized the actions of federally-licensed firearms owners regarding the purchase, sale, transportation, importation, exportation, or use of hundreds of thousands of rifles and shotguns that were previously legal.
The gun ban focused on what it termed ‘assault-style weapons,’ which are, in reality, traditional semi-automatic rifles and shotguns that have enjoyed popularity among hunters and sport shooters for over a century.
In May 2020, the federal government enacted an Order-in-Council that prohibited 1,500 types of “assault-style” firearms and outlined specific components of the newly banned firearms. Property owners must adhere to the law by October 2023.
Trudeau’s Buyback Hasn’t Happened
“In the announcement regarding the ban, the prime minister stated that the government would seize the prohibited firearms, assuring that their lawful owners would be ‘grandfathered’ or compensated fairly.” “That hasn’t happened,” criminologist Gary Mauser told Rebel News.
Mauser projected expenses ranging from $2.6 billion to $6.7 billion. The figure reflects the compensation costs amounting to $756 million, as outlined by the Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO).
“The projected expenses for gathering the illegal firearms are estimated to range from $1.6 billion to $7 billion.” “This range estimate increases to between $2.647 billion and $7 billion when compensation costs to owners are factored in,” Mauser stated.
Figures requested by Conservative MP Shannon Stubbs concerning firearms prohibited due to the May 1, 2020 Order In Council reveal that $72 million has been allocated to the firearm “buyback” program, yet not a single firearm has been confiscated to date.
In a recent revelation, Public Safety Canada disclosed that the federal government allocated a staggering $41,094,556, as prompted by an order paper question from Conservative Senator Don Plett last September, yet yielded no tangible outcomes.
An internal memo from late 2019 revealed that the Liberals projected their politically motivated harassment would incur a cost of $1.8 billion.
Enforcement efforts Questioned
By December 2023, estimates from TheGunBlog.ca indicate that the Liberals and RCMP had incurred or were responsible for approximately $30 million in personnel expenses related to the enforcement efforts. The union representing the police service previously stated that the effort to confiscate firearms is a “misdirected effort” aimed at ensuring public safety.
“This action diverts crucial personnel, resources, and funding from tackling the more pressing and escalating issue of criminal use of illegal firearms,” stated the National Police Federation (NPF).
The Canadian Sporting Arms & Ammunition Association (CSAAA), representing firearms retailers, has stated it will have “zero involvement” in the confiscation of these firearms. Even Canada Post held back from providing assistance due to safety concerns.
The consultant previously assessed that retailers are sitting on almost $1 billion worth of inventory that cannot be sold or returned to suppliers because of the Order-In-Council.
“Despite the ongoing confusion surrounding the ban, after four years, we ought to be able to address one crucial question.” Has the prohibition enhanced safety for Canadians? Mauser asks.
Illegally Obtained Firearms are the Problem
Statistics Canada reports a 10% increase in firearm-related violent crime between 2020 and 2022, rising from 12,614 incidents to 13,937 incidents. In that timeframe, the incidence of firearm-related violent crime increased from 33.7 incidents per 100,000 population in 2021 to 36.7 incidents the subsequent year.
“This marks the highest rate documented since the collection of comparable data began in 2009,” the criminologist explains.
Supplementary DataData indicates that firearm homicides have risen since 2020. “The issue lies not with lawfully-held firearms,” Mauser stated.
Firearms that have been banned under the Order-in-Council continue to be securely stored in the safes of their lawful owners. The individuals underwent a thorough vetting process by the RCMP and are subject to nightly monitoring to ensure there are no infractions that could pose a risk to public safety.
“The firearms involved in homicides were seldom legally owned weapons wielded by their rightful owners,” Mauser continues. The number of offenses linked to organized crime has surged from 4,810 in 2016 to a staggering 13,056 in 2020.
“If those in power … aim to diminish crime and enhance public safety, they ought to implement strategies that effectively focus on offenders and utilize our limited tax resources judiciously to reach these objectives,” he stated.
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Google is so closely associated with its key product that its name is a verb that signifies “search.” However, Google’s dominance in that sector is dwindling.
According to eMarketer, Google will lose control of the US search industry for the first time in decades next year.
Google will remain the dominant search player, accounting for 48% of American search advertising revenue. And, remarkably, Google is still increasing its sales in the field, despite being the dominating player in search since the early days of the George W. Bush administration. However, Amazon is growing at a quicker rate.
Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding
Amazon will hold over a quarter of US search ad dollars next year, rising to 27% by 2026, while Google will fall even more, according to eMarketer.
The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the forecast.
Lest you think you’ll have to switch to Bing or Yahoo, this isn’t the end of Google or anything really near.
Google is the fourth-most valued public firm in the world. Its market worth is $2.1 trillion, trailing just Apple, Microsoft, and the AI chip darling Nvidia. It also maintains its dominance in other industries, such as display advertisements, where it dominates alongside Facebook’s parent firm Meta, and video ads on YouTube.
To put those “other” firms in context, each is worth more than Delta Air Lines’ total market value. So, yeah, Google is not going anywhere.
Nonetheless, Google faces numerous dangers to its operations, particularly from antitrust regulators.
On Monday, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that Google must open up its Google Play Store to competitors, dealing a significant blow to the firm in its long-running battle with Fortnite creator Epic Games. Google announced that it would appeal the verdict.
In August, a federal judge ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly on search. That verdict could lead to the dissolution of the company’s search operation. Another antitrust lawsuit filed last month accuses Google of abusing its dominance in the online advertising business.
Meanwhile, European regulators have compelled Google to follow tough new standards, which have resulted in multiple $1 billion-plus fines.
Pixa Bay
Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding
On top of that, the marketplace is becoming more difficult on its own.
TikTok, the fastest-growing social network, is expanding into the search market. And Amazon has accomplished something few other digital titans have done to date: it has established a habit.
When you want to buy anything, you usually go to Amazon, not Google. Amazon then buys adverts to push companies’ products to the top of your search results, increasing sales and earning Amazon a greater portion of the revenue. According to eMarketer, it is expected to generate $27.8 billion in search revenue in the United States next year, trailing only Google’s $62.9 billion total.
And then there’s AI, the technology that (supposedly) will change everything.
Why search in stilted language for “kendall jenner why bad bunny breakup” or “police moving violation driver rights no stop sign” when you can just ask OpenAI’s ChatGPT, “What’s going on with Kendall Jenner and Bad Bunny?” in “I need help fighting a moving violation involving a stop sign that wasn’t visible.” Google is working on exactly this technology with its Gemini product, but its success is far from guaranteed, especially with Apple collaborating with OpenAI and other businesses rapidly joining the market.
A Google spokeswoman referred to a blog post from last week in which the company unveiled ads in its AI overviews (the AI-generated text that appears at the top of search results). It’s Google’s way of expressing its ability to profit on a changing marketplace while retaining its business, even as its consumers steadily transition to ask-and-answer AI and away from search.
Google has long used a single catchphrase to defend itself against opponents who claim it is a monopoly abusing its power: competition is only a click away. Until recently, that seemed comically obtuse. Really? We are going to switch to Bing? Or Duck Duck Go? Give me a break.
But today, it feels more like reality.
Google is in no danger of disappearing. However, every highly dominating company faces some type of reckoning over time. GE, a Dow mainstay for more than a century, was broken up last year and is now a shell of its previous dominance. Sears declared bankruptcy in 2022 and is virtually out of business. US Steel, long the foundation of American manufacturing, is attempting to sell itself to a Japanese corporation.
SOURCE | CNN
(VOR News) – A ruling that prohibits emergency abortions that contravene the Supreme Court law in the state of Texas, which has one of the most stringent abortion restrictions in the country, has been upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States. The United States Supreme Court upheld this decision.
The justices did not provide any specifics regarding the underlying reasons for their decision to uphold an order from a lower court that declared hospitals cannot be legally obligated to administer abortions if doing so would violate the law in the state of Texas.
Institutions are not required to perform abortions, as stipulated in the decree. The common populace did not investigate any opposing viewpoints. The decision was made just weeks before a presidential election that brought abortion to the forefront of the political agenda.
This decision follows the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that ended abortion nationwide.
In response to a request from the administration of Vice President Joe Biden to overturn the lower court’s decision, the justices expressed their disapproval.
The government contends that hospitals are obligated to perform abortions in compliance with federal legislation when the health or life of an expectant patient is in an exceedingly precarious condition.
This is the case in regions where the procedure is prohibited. The difficulty hospitals in Texas and other states are experiencing in determining whether or not routine care could be in violation of stringent state laws that prohibit abortion has resulted in an increase in the number of complaints concerning pregnant women who are experiencing medical distress being turned away from emergency rooms.
The administration cited the Supreme Court’s ruling in a case that bore a striking resemblance to the one that was presented to it in Idaho at the beginning of the year. The justices took a limited decision in that case to allow the continuation of emergency abortions without interruption while a lawsuit was still being heard.
In contrast, Texas has been a vocal proponent of the injunction’s continued enforcement. Texas has argued that its circumstances are distinct from those of Idaho, as the state does have an exemption for situations that pose a significant hazard to the health of an expectant patient.
According to the state, the discrepancy is the result of this exemption. The state of Idaho had a provision that safeguarded a woman’s life when the issue was first broached; however, it did not include protection for her health.
Certified medical practitioners are not obligated to wait until a woman’s life is in imminent peril before they are legally permitted to perform an abortion, as determined by the state supreme court.
The state of Texas highlighted this to the Supreme Court.
Nevertheless, medical professionals have criticized the Texas statute as being perilously ambiguous, and a medical board has declined to provide a list of all the disorders that are eligible for an exception. Furthermore, the statute has been criticized for its hazardous ambiguity.
For an extended period, termination of pregnancies has been a standard procedure in medical treatment for individuals who have been experiencing significant issues. It is implemented in this manner to prevent catastrophic outcomes, such as sepsis, organ failure, and other severe scenarios.
Nevertheless, medical professionals and hospitals in Texas and other states with strict abortion laws have noted that it is uncertain whether or not these terminations could be in violation of abortion prohibitions that include the possibility of a prison sentence. This is the case in regions where abortion prohibitions are exceedingly restrictive.
Following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which resulted in restrictions on the rights of women to have abortions in several Republican-ruled states, the Texas case was revisited in 2022.
As per the orders that were disclosed by the administration of Vice President Joe Biden, hospitals are still required to provide abortions in cases that are classified as dire emergency.
As stipulated in a piece of health care legislation, the majority of hospitals are obligated to provide medical assistance to patients who are experiencing medical distress. This is in accordance with the law.
The state of Texas maintained that hospitals should not be obligated to provide abortions throughout the litigation, as doing so would violate the state’s constitutional prohibition on abortions. In its January judgment, the 5th United States Circuit Court of Appeals concurred with the state and acknowledged that the administration had exceeded its authority.
SOURCE: AP
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