Tiger, Tiger. (China Sucks)
I am very, very upset this morning.
Sorry, good morning to you all,
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Big H went out to get The Times and I could have cried when I saw what was on the front page.
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CHINA HAS DECIDED TO ALLOW THE TRADE OF TIGER PELTS.
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What is wrong with these people!
There are so few tigers left in our world.
What do we say to future generations that could possibly explain our behaviour, in a way that they could understand, or that could possibly show us in any other way than as savages.
No, savages do not know any better.
Criminal is the only word to describe the wanton destruction of irreplaceable beauty.
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We are privileged to live upon this planet for a short time and we should care for it, and each other, not destroy and pillage it for financial gain.
It is unforgivable.
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In India this despicable, shortsighted decision will most probably lead to the destruction of the largest remaining tiger population in the world.
A century ago there were about 40,000 tigers in India, but now there are only about1,400 left.
It has decreased from a pitiful 3,642 in 2002. This is believed to be in direct correlation to the demand for traditional medicines in China.
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Although the Chinese breed tigers in captivity, supposedly as a tourist attraction, the experts believe that they do this because they are hoping to use them to produce tiger tonics which sell for a great deal of money.
The thought is that the wording of this document which gives approval to….’the trade and use of tiger and leopard skins…AND THEIR PRODUCTS’….will allow it to be interpreted as a permission to go ahead with the lucrative production of Tiger Bone Wine.
Yesterday, wildlife trade monitors, working with the WWF, said that the wording of the Chinese document is very loose and can be interpreted as a permission to go ahead with tiger wine on a commercial basis,
Experts say that those who demand products made from tigers will regard ‘wild’ tiger products as more efficacious than ‘farmed’ products.
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It is also much cheaper to pay an Indian poacher £5 for a dead tiger than to expensively farm them.
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One tiger is worth an absolute fortune
The most profitable part is the tiger bones.
One tiger provides about 55lbs of bones. These can be worth a staggering sum approaching a quarter of a million pounds.
Wildlife Trust officials are afraid that the wording of the document will be the forerunner to the decimation of India’s remaining tigers, by stimulating the demand for traditional medicine products in China.
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In 2007 the State Forestry Administration of China issued a permission to allow trade in legally sourced leopard and tiger skins, but it was kept extremely quiet, even to the extent of erasing mention of it from the Internet, to prevent damage to China’s international reputation in the run up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
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Personally, I feel sick about what these despicable people are allowed to do.
It is like killing Whales. Why are they always prepared to do things until the last creature is wiped out.
This beauty belongs to all of us, not to politicians, or to one country only.
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If I were in charge I would stop trade with China immediately and stuff politics and stuff trade.
Stuff doing things for profit.
Stop trading with China no matter how much money you lose, but then again I would have stopped trade with China the moment that they invaded Tibet.
That was, and is, a total disgrace and a cause for great shame on our part.
None of us prevented the destruction of a way of life and religion because there was nothing worth having in a ‘backward’ country like that.
Shame on us!
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Sometimes there is more to lose than cheap oil and profits from trade, there is decency and there are things called ethics.
Perhaps we should force all our politicians to have these words tattooed upon their foreheads, so that when they look into each other’s fat-cat faces they can be reminded of what they are supposed to be.
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When we all behave like this, we do not only destroy the animals we should be protecting,
We also destroy all that is best in ourselves.
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Sadly
J
Of course me writing this will not change anything will it?
People have a small attention span nowadays.
They will say “Oh, what a shame. It is a disgrace”, and pass on to the next thing that catches their attention.
We live in a sound bite society.
The only time that I remember people getting out in the streets, and making their feelings known, was when they protested about the Poll Tax. A time when they were hurt in their pockets.
Will there be any similar protest now we are being hurt in our souls?
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Politicians are intended to be the representatives of the people.
They seem to have forgotten that they are in that position to carry out ‘the wishes of the people’, not whatever they feel is expedient for their own pockets and their own careers.
Why don’t we start telling them what we want for a change, and make them bloody do it.
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We should sanction China, until it stops allowing bears to be imprisoned in cages so small that they cannot even move around, or stand up.
This is done so that they can insert tubes into the bears’ stomachs, to allow the daily draining of their bile from their gallbladders.
This is incredibly painful for the bear, when it is ‘milked’, and observers see them moaning and biting their own paws while it is being done.
There are several thousand of these bear farms and they collect 7,000 kilos of bile per year.
Most of these animals are caught out in the wild and then imprisoned until they die.
They are subjected to shocking procedures, carried out by by untrained people, and have no access to veterinary help. A great many of them die from infections caused by their cruel treatment.
etc, etc,etc,etc.
WSPA thinks that China is planning a move to register it’s Bear Farms with CITES.
This is just a ploy to circumvent the international ban on trade in Bear parts.
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And let’s not even start upon Human Rights abuse!
