Charming: South African Leaders Want To Bless 2010 World Cup By Soaking Stadiums With Blood of Sacrificed Animals

indopunk 2 months, 1 week ago on Wordpress

What the hell is up with people’s spelling? If your going to write about something from one perspective to another at least try to back it up with spell-check or something. None of you make any good points when we can’t read what you think you’re trying to say.

First, fuck off to the idiot who tried to lump everyone in Calif. as some kind of whiny liberal. I happen to be a vegatarian, a little liberal, and from California. Guess what asshole, I have no problem with hunting or fishing, I have done both over the years and would never want to take that away from anyone. I ate what I got and enjoyed the experience. Before some Nazi vegan starts crying in their PBR, I choose to not eat meat because I don’t support industrial ranching, and for the health reasons that go along with it. If you don’t kill it yourself don’t eat it. I am a human and also an omnivore. I’m not opposed to killing animals, I’m opposed to the environmental effects of overfishing and

hunting. If the Japanese have their way we won’t have to debate about this anymore, `cause there will be no more fish to catch anyway.

It wasn’t that long ago that we were all from hunter gatherer groups. It’s still engrained in our psyches. Some people love the thrill of the hunt/fish. Let them do it. Humans by nature are risk takers. If we weren’t we would have died off along time ago. What we really need to be boycotting are the huge commercialized fishing and ranching companies. These are the ones that are fucking up the environment, and in turn poisoning the people who buy things like ‘Tyson” chicken. (that’s for the earlier blogger, could you have picked a shittier co. to reference?) ... See all content Hide content

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WC 2010: Let the pessimism begin, part 2 3 months, 1 week ago on Wordpress

[...] has agitated the animal rights activists, aroused the goth community, and inspired the cultural relativists debate. The complexity of the human rights/cultural norms issue exceeds the scope of this blog, so [...]

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wjv 3 months, 2 weeks ago on Wordpress

OK, I’m going to follow up to myself here…

I briefly looked for any mention of this story on South Africa’s two premier online news sites (iol.co.za and news24.com) and – as expected – didn’t find a peep, confirming my suspicion that this is pretty much not news locally.

I then did a search for “world cup slaughter” on both sites, and came up with one article from July about something very different, but which might serve to illustrate the normal everyday nature of the situation. The article in question is here:

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php.....124C182042

In summary, South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma was touring the construction site of the stadium being built in Durban, accompanied by one Obed Mlaba, the mayor of the eThekwini municipality of which the City of Durban forms part.

The final paragraph of the article states matter-of-factly:

“Zuma called on Mlaba to slaughter a cow for the workers when they finished building the Moses Mabhida stadium. – SAPA”

So here we have the President of the country suggesting to the mayor of a city of 3.5 million inhabitants that he slaughters a cow. You may think this contradicts my statement in the previous post that the “leaders” simply aren’t bothered by it, but I think it underscores it. You may have to adjust your cultural spectacles, but this is neither unusual, nor would this fact remotely have raised a fuss when it was reported in a throwaway “human interest” final paragraph by the local press agency.

Many a goat and cow is going to meet its end across the country in celebrations both official and unofficial. It’ll be interesting to see what, if anything, the South African Government and/or sporting authorities will do in response to the outcry over the Reuters article. If, that is, there is an outcry beyond the mild hubbub on the blogosphere. ... See all content Hide content

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Eva 3 months, 2 weeks ago on Wordpress

I’d love to see some more links on this – my Google search turned up a zillion re-prints of the Reuters story, which offers zero background on either the origins/significance of the ritual or the reaction in South Africa. It also came up with a couple of very angry blog posts that are textbook dismissal-of-Africa-as-a-dark-land-of-savagery-and-barbarism.

This angry blogger certainly seems convinced that ritual animal slaughter is a major part of South African life:

http://thewordwright.wordpress.....e-iceberg/

This South African news story is light on details too, but its comments section includes a reference to “savages” in “darkest Africa,” a suggestion that the world respond with an apartheid-era-style boycott of the country (with the implication that animal slaughter is just as bad as that unbelievably ugly regime was), and several semi-veiled comments about the crime levels in Jo’Burg being somehow related.

This sort of story always brings out the racists and imperialists, which is why, despite being a lifelong vegetarian, I hesitate to jump on the condemnation train. I suspect a lot of folks object to this for the wrong reasons. I’m not convinced that it’s up to outsiders to judge the authenticity of someone else’s cultural practice, and I’m also not convinced that ritual animal slaughter at the World Cup is necessarily any worse than what happens at The Keg every night.

As for the point about Africa’s diversity, well, presumably South Africa’s leaders want to tap into one of their own traditions, not one from thousands of miles away. Of course I haven’t seen anything saying this is an essential South African cultural practice, but I haven’t seen anything saying it isn’t, either.

I’m enjoying this discussion. I had my back up initially because I found your post maybe a bit overly skeptical or contemptuous, but it’s been interesting talking things out further. ... See all content Hide content

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Omri Ceren 3 months, 2 weeks ago on Wordpress

I think that the suggestion of cultural fusions is a really interesting one. Like everything else this is a judgment call – and, given the intercultural tangles, a pretty muddy one. Respecting other cultures is arguably *the* question that serious travelers have to face, never more so then when those cultures’ practices might not be what we’d choose for ourselves. It’s *always* a balancing act between the sense you have for the genuine cultural resonances those practices have vs. your own sense of revulsion.

My sense from reading about this is that there are just as many South Africans rolling their eyes over this as there are Westerners. Johannesburg is a global city, one of the world’s 40 biggest. This isn’t getting covered locally as some kind of solumn ritual with strong cultural resonances. Instead it’s being greeted with smirks and eyerolling. In fact, if you try to find information on animal sacrifice in Africa, most of the stuff you come up with *across Google* is about this controversy. That’s because it’s simply – as a brute empirical matter – not deeply ingrained into the culture; that at least one explanation for why so many South Africans also think it’s a weird and unnecessary stunt. It seems to be much closer to the US holding the Olympics and then trotting out everyone in cowboy hats and Davy Crocket caps.

Plus, even if none of that was true, it still doesn’t answer the central point: Africa is filled with ancient and wild variety. Why highlight that particular cultural practice – for the first time, mind you, since this didn’t happen when they hosted the 1995 Rugby World Cup or the 2003 Cricket World Cup – rather than any of those others?

So while public animal sacrifice might not be off-the-charts inappropriate enough to just reject out of hand – and some vegan and vegetarian athletes are suggesting that it is, though I’m agnostic on it – the practice is *singular* enough that this seems like a pretty straightforward call after everything’s said and done. ... See all content Hide content

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Omri Ceren 3 months, 2 weeks ago on Wordpress

It’s the combination of the two. You don’t have to be an animal rights activist to think that *senseless* slaughter is disquieting. So the question becomes “is this senseless.”

Well these gentlemen say it’s not senseless at all – they say that it’s part of their culture.

That’s where the rest becomes important. There’s nothing inherently wrong with staging a manufactured ritual. Why not? The point is that *if* you’re staging a kitschy and manufactured spectacle then you don’t get to *defend* it on the basis of authenticity.

That’s why it’s important to realize how silly the “indigenous” argument is. It’s not because that makes it automatically bad. It’s that their defense of this stunt is that it *is* authentic. If that’s not a good argument – and it’s not – then all they’re left with is that they’re killing some cows in public for no good reason. ... See all content Hide content

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Tweets that mention Charming: South African Leaders Want To Bless 2010 World Cup By Soaking Stadiums With Blood of Sacrificed Animals -- Topsy.com 3 months, 2 weeks ago on Wordpress

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