Transcript of the above video: 

As the thumbnail suggests although it may not be readily apparent to those who are outside of the USA, we are talking about this recent news regarding - I mean it's very surreal to live in a world where some of the biggest arguably political news coming out of the United States has to do with the execution of a squirrel - but that's where we're at. And sort of for those who are outside of America or don't have a paradigm as to sort of how things work in America, this may seem almost absurdist but it's not and the reason is when you look into the background of this situation involving Peanut the squirrel and let's not forget Fred the raccoon who was also killed, executed by the State of New York,  which I'm waiting around now; Willie Nelson needs to do a remake of the song Pancho and Lefty immediately and call it Peanut and Fred, it would be amazing.  I'm sure it would sell out a million copies immediately. It would be like Rich Men North of Richmond at this point. 

But basically what happened in the United States, to sort of just distill it down into its basic components, the State of New York committed extensive time and resources and manpower to going after a guy who had adopted as like an infant squirrel - he had found this squirrel sort of abandoned in the wild, and he nursed it back to health and then the thing could not be put back in the wild even though they tried because it had been domesticated because he had saved this squirrel. Somewhere along the line, some bureaucrat got their nose out of joint about this whole thing and basically, and then there was an anonymous complaint apparently, and that was utilized to go through the process of issuing a full warrant or Court Order, whatever - I don't know the exact administrative - I think it's a warrant though, it executed a warrant, goes to this guy's house, detains him at his own home for 6 hours, grills his wife who's not a natural born American as to her Immigration status in such a way that really freaked her out which I can understand why. Anybody that has ever been an immigrant that has been under heavy scrutiny by authorities knows that that is an unpleasant endeavour and then basically they seize this guy's squirrel who was the basis for again this animal sanctuary and took it and executed it, citing all we need to kill it so we can test it for rabies notwithstanding the fact they could have easily quarantined either or both of the animals and placed them under observation to make sure that they did not have rabies. But one, this guy's been living with this squirrel in his house for 7 years so presumably this thing is not Old Yeller that needs to be taken out back and popped in the head with a shotgun. So, I don't really get what the underlying purpose was behind all of this other than just massive Government overreach, and guess what, there seems to be an analog to this going on over here in Thailand at the moment. 

I thought of making this video after reading a recent article in the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Bangkok City Hall to enact new pet policy. First of all, why is City Hall sitting around coming up with all of these Draconianly, inanely, overreachingly, pedantically, ridiculous restrictions and regulations. I mean a couple of weeks ago, their big idea was "hey let's go around the Low jack all the urban poor so we can figure out how to extract wealth from them and track them and surveil all their transactions," that was their big idea. Now their big idea is they have got - I don't know what it is, people get into these rooms or whatever and they get blinders on or group- think takes hold, I don't know - but they decided "hey you know what we need to do? we need to go after people's pets, that's surreal!” Not let's check out how the roads are working, make sure things are paved correctly, bridges, the administration of the city itself, no let's go bother the citizenry about their pets. Again, this seems to be a trend. It's almost like what Thailand dreams, America does; and what America dreams, Thailand does. It's like some weird almost subconscious connection between these two countries. In any event quoting directly: "The Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) will implement a new policy to regulate the number of domesticated cats and dogs in the city." Well hold on a minute, will they? Quoting further: "Surachit Phongsinghvithya, President of the Bangkok Council, said on Saturday the Council recently approved an amendment to its regulation on pet ownership and release." First off, you don't have anything better to do on the Bangkok Council than bother us about our pets. Quoting further: "The amendment," and this, again they report this stuff as if it's an inevitability. No, it's a proposal. Quoting further: "The amendment will be submitted to Bangkok Governor Chadchart Sittipunt for publication in the Royal Gazette. The regulation will take effect 360 days after the announcement, he said." If it gets announced, if it gets promulgated, not a foregone conclusion. Let's start there. 

Then meanwhile, again it is worth noting that why the obsession amongst the bureaucratize class that our pets are now subject to intense scrutiny? And this is not minor scrutiny by the way. Quoting further: "For a condominium unit or rental space of 20m²-80m², the BMA will permit one or two pets." Will permit you to have pets in your own house. Quoting further: "For homes or units larger than 80m² - 200m², owners can keep up to three pets." Look at the micro-managing, nanny-minder mentality of this nonsense. Quoting further: "Properties with 200 - 400m² may have up to four pets well space is larger than 400m² are allowed up to six pets." So what? These bureaucrats are going to come around to your house and start measuring your house and then using that metric and figuring out how many pets you have? Don't you have anything better to do? And if there's nothing else that's showing you something from what's going on in the States it's that this is a bad idea, and this will lead to bad fallout in terms of optics and public relations if you get into this nonsense, okay? 

I don't know what has happened in the last year because for the last 10 and again you can get into the prior Government and all the things that were going on there, but we didn't see all this nonsense. They stayed out of our lives; they weren't sitting around trying to tell us how many pets we can have and measuring our living spaces. Our homes! Our homes, not your homes. You don't get to come tell me how many pets I can have in my own home, that's ridiculous. It's just the same kind of thinking that led to this raccoon and this squirrel getting killed for no good reason. Just a bunch of bureaucrats saying, "because we say so and it's for your own good". Did we not learn from COVID the dangers of that? I just don't get it. 

So here we are, America and Thailand, sitting around wanting to nanny mind everybody about their pets. Great! Great policy. Meanwhile, there's real problems in the world. Why doesn't the Government get on those?