From the BBC:
Witch-doctors reveal extent of child sacrifice in UgandaBy Tim Whewell
BBC News, Uganda
A BBC investigation into human sacrifice in Uganda has heard first-hand accounts which suggest ritual killings of children may be more common than authorities have acknowledged.One witch-doctor led us to his secret shrine and said he had clients who regularly captured children and brought their blood and body parts to be consumed by spirits.
Meanwhile, a former witch-doctor who now campaigns to end child sacrifice confessed for the first time to having murdered about 70 people, including his own son.
The Ugandan government told us that human sacrifice is on the increase, and according to the head of the country's Anti-Human Sacrifice Taskforce the crime is directly linked to rising levels of development and prosperity, and an increasing belief that witchcraft can help people get rich quickly.
At this point, I started wondering if our legs are being pulled by the BBC. Does Uganda really have an official Anti-Human Sacrifice Taskforce?
Or is this like that scene in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas where Hunter S. Thompson (a.k.a., Raoul Duke) and his 300 pound Samoan attorney, Dr. Gonzo, infiltrate the cop convention and horrify a nice Southern district attorney with tales of how us Malibu cops have to "go to the mat" with the bloodthirsty human sacrifice gangs kidnapping teenage girls out of McDonald's drive-thru windows on Pacific Coast Highway? From Terry Gilliam's screenplay:
INT. CASINO BAR - DAY
DUKE sees GONZO at the bar -- talking to a SPORTY LOOKING
COP about 40 whose name tag identifies him as a DISTRICT
ATTORNEY FROM GEORGIA.
DUKE
They're everywhere. Nobody's safe.
And sure as hell not in the South.
They like warm weather... You'd
never believe it. In L.A. it's out
of control. First it was drugs,
now it's witchcraft.
DA
Witchcraft? Shit, you can't mean it!
The BARTENDER cleans his glasses, one ear straining for the
conversation.
GONZO
Read the newspapers.
DUKE
Man, you don't know trouble until
you have to face down a bunch of
these addicts gone crazy for human
sacrifice!
DA
Naw! That's science fiction stuff!
DUKE
Not where we operate.
GONZO
Hell, in Malibu alone, these
goddamn Satan worshippers kill six
or eight people every day. All
they want is the blood. They'll
take people right off the street if
they have to.
DUKE
Just the other day we had a case
where they grabbed a girl right out
of a McDonald's hamburger stand.
She was a waitress, about sixteen
years old... with a lot of people
watching, too!
The BARTENDER keeps cleaning the same glass -- more and more
furiously.
DA
What happened? What did they do to
her?
GONZO
Do? Jesus Christ, man. They
chopped her goddamn head off right
there in the parking lot! Then
they cut all kinds of holes in her
head and sucked out the blood!
DA
And nobody did anything?
DUKE
What could they do? The guy that
took the head was about six-seven,
and maybe three-hundred pounds. He
was packing two Lugers, and the
others had M-16s.
GONZO
They just ran back out into Death
Valley -- you know, where Manson
turned up...
DUKE
Like big lizards. ...
DUKE
They were all veterans.
DA
Veterans?!!!?
Agog with the horrors of the story, the BARTENDER polishes
the glass -- faster and faster...
GONZO
Yeh. The big guy used to be a
major in the Marines.
DA
A major!
GONZO
We know where he lives, but we
can't get near the house.
DA
Naw! Not a major.
GONZO
He wanted the pineal gland.
DA
Really?
GONZO
That's how he got so big. When he
quit the Marines he was just a
little guy.
DUKE
Usually, it's whole families.
During the night. Most of them
don't even wake up until they feel
their heads going -- and then, of
course, it's too late.
The glass smashes in the BARTENDER's hand.
DUKE (CONT'D)
Happens every day. ...
DUKE turns to a WAITRESS with a warm smile.
Three more rums. Plenty of ice.
Maybe a handful of lime chunks.
WAITRESS
Are you guys with the police
convention upstairs?
DA
We sure are, Miss.
WAITRESS
I thought so. I never heard that
kind of talk around here before.
Jesus Christ! How do you guys
stand that kind of work?
GONZO
(grinning)
We like it. It's groovy.
The WAITRESS stares -- sickened -- at GONZO.
DUKE
What's wrong with you? Hell,
somebody has to do it.
DA
(whacks his fist on
the bar)
Hell, I really hate to hear this.
Because everything that happens in
California seems to get down our
way, sooner or later. Mostly
Atlanta. But that was back when
the goddamn bastards were peaceful.
All we had to do was to keep 'em
under surveillance. They didn't
roam around much... But now Jesus,
it seems nobody's safe.
GONZO
(with a conspiratorial
nod)
You're going to need to take the
bull by the horns -- go to the mat
with this scum.
DA
What do you mean by that?
GONZO
You know what I mean. We've done
it before and we can damn well do
it again!
DUKE
Cut their goddamn heads off. Every
one of them. That's what we're
doing in California.
DA
(stupefied)
WHAT?
GONZO
Sure. It's all on the Q.T., but
everybody who matters is with us
all the way down the line.
DUKE
We keep it quiet. It's not the
kind of thing you'd want to talk
about upstairs. Not with the press
around. ...
DA
God almighty!
(muttering in a daze)
I don't think I should tell my wife
about this. She'd never understand.
You know how women are.
DUKE gives the DA a brotherly slap on the back.
DUKE
Just be thankful your heart is
young and strong.
DUKE and GONZO leave the stunned DA -- staring into the
swirling ice in drink.
Apparently, however, yes, Uganda, unlike the real Malibu, does have an official taskforce to fight human sacrifice.
From The Guardian, 9/6/09:
Child sacrifice and ritual murders rise in Uganda as famine looms
Uganda has been shocked by a surge in ritualistic murders and human sacrifice, with police struggling to respond and public hysteria mounting at each gruesome discovery.
In 2008 more than 300 cases of murder and disappearances linked to ritual ceremonies were reported to the police with 18 cases making it to the courts. There were also several high-profile arrests of parents and relatives accused of selling children for human sacrifice.
In January this year the Ugandan government appointed a special police taskforce on human sacrifice and announced that 2,000 officers were to receive specialist training in tackling child trafficking with the support of the US government. Since the taskforce was set up there have been 15 more murders linked to human sacrifice with another 200 disappearances, mainly of children and young adults, under investigation.
"This year we have had more occurrences of people attempting to sell their children to witch-doctors as part of ritual ceremonies to guarantee wealth and prosperity," said Moses Binoga, acting commissioner of the anti-human sacrifice and trafficking taskforce.
Both police and NGOs are attributing the surge to a new wave of commercial witch-doctors using mass media to market their services and demand large sums of money to sacrifice humans and animals for people who believe blood will bring great prosperity.My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
"There were also several high-profile arrests of parents and relatives accused of selling children for human sacrifice."
ReplyDeleteIt takes a village to ritually sacrifice a child.
Man, Komment Kontrol must have been in a good mood to get this thread approved.
ReplyDeleteI would never have been allowed to post something like that.
Albinos in sub-Saharan Africa have long been targets of persecution and now murder because of the belief that their body parts have special efficacy for witchcraft.
ReplyDeleteNAIROBI, Kenya — The mistaken belief that albino body parts have magical powers has driven thousands of Africa's albinos into hiding, fearful of losing their lives and limbs to unscrupulous dealers who can make up to $75,000 selling a complete dismembered set.
ReplyDeleteWell at least they're about to get their gays under control.
ReplyDeleteWell at least they're about to get their gays under control.
ReplyDeleteDoes that mean that now we're gonna get a bunch of anti-anti-sodomites to go with all the anti-anti-semites we have around here?
To Mr. Sailer:
ReplyDeleteI have gone back to read many of your articles dating back to 1995(?) and I noticed that you've slowly abandoned your analytical, somewhat disspassionate/objective voice
and you've gotten more polemical.
What's going on?
Appropriate eighties techno song here from Toto Coelo
ReplyDelete"All I wanna do, is make a meal of you
We are what we eat, you're my kind of meat
Got a hunger for your love, it's what I'm speaking of
Give a dog a bone, I can take it home
Sung in unison with last two lines of previous verse:
Hot pot, cook it up, I'm never gonna stop
Yum, yum, gee it's fun, I'm banging on a drum
Looks trim, vitamin, forget the dieting
I eat canniballls"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4O1A-mmBWw&feature=PlayList&p=936B8BC47B92A14F&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=8
How far back in time do we have to go to find this kind of stuff widespread among Caucasian people? 4,000 years? When did human sacrifice die out in the Middle East? What about in Europe?
ReplyDelete4,000 years?
ReplyDelete4000 years gets you well into biblical and near-ancient times.
Off the top of my head, I can't think of any cannibalism, but this really feels like a topic which is just crying for The Derb's expertise.
'When did human sacrifice die out in the Middle East? What about in Europe?'
ReplyDelete317 years ago.
Wasn't New England witch burning a human sacrifice to assuage the gods?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem_witch_trials
Human sacrifice was practiced in pagan Northern Europe until Christianity came along.
ReplyDeleteThe Romans official outlawed it in 97 BC, but it appears to have faded out earlier.
There's one human sacrifice in the Old Testament and one in the Trojan War stories, but those are more exceptions that prove the rule that the Jews and Greeks didn't think much of it.
"How far back in time do we have to go to find this kind of stuff widespread among Caucasian people?"
ReplyDeleteThe more relevant question is how far do you have to go back to find it among other sub-Saharn African groups, like those in the far southern areas, or hunter-gatherers?
People from the Congo region are just plain fucked up, as Mr. Kurtz could have told you.
I wish Americans were more aware of just how commom this sort of thing is in Africa. We might hear less of how "we're all the same."
ReplyDelete"Wasn't New England witch burning a human sacrifice to assuage the gods?"
ReplyDeleteNo witches were burned in New England. The Salem trials ended with several hangings, & one poor bastard was pressed to death. Different story in old England & Europe, of course.
The correlation with Matriarchy and this sort of behavior is very strong. While there are many things against Islam, human sacrifice and cannibalism are not among them.
ReplyDeleteGenerally, you see this hyper-masculinity and paganistic, pantheistic superstition among Matriarchal peoples. Patriarchies can be plenty ugly, but not in this way.
Terrible, really. Northern Germanic Europeans used to indulge in this, so too the Celts, until the practice was wiped out by newly Christian kings. Charlemagne, IIRC, fought a War with the Saxons killing estimated around 125,000, considerable amount of the population in those days, to wipe out paganism, and in particular sacrifices to Wotan. The Old Norse and Celtic gods were always hungry for Blood. [This was IIRC from memory, around 900 AD or so. The true story of Christianization of Europe AFTER the Romans is hardly ever told because Europeans don't want to believe they were that bloody or primitive. But they were.]
"The more relevant question is how far do you have to go back to find it among other sub-Saharn African groups, like those in the far southern areas, or hunter-gatherers?"
ReplyDeleteLike, zero years. There's this case of a Nigerian child sacrificed in London in 2001, and apparently there's ongoing ritual murder in South Africa, hundreds of cases a year.
Let's not forget our old friends the Druids.
ReplyDeletehttp://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/03/090320-druids-sacrifice-cannibalism.html
"Nobody knows who they were, or what they were doin'."
"That's funny, she doesn't look Druish."
"When did human sacrifice die out in the Middle East? What about in Europe?"
ReplyDeleteAncient Phoenicians and Carthaginians (ancestors of the modern Lebanese and to a smaller
extent of the modern Tunisians and Algerians) sometimes sacrificed their own children to the Gods up until their conquest by the Romans roughly 2200 years ago. However, no one there was eating the children. The Romans were scandalized regardless, calling the Carthaginians savages. Some modern historians tried to brush this off by suggesting that Roman writers invented the whole thing to slander their Carthaginian enemies, but then mass deposits of infants' bones were found in Tunisia in sacrificial contexts, confirming the story.
In Tacitus's Germania we find a description of a German religious ritual which includes this passage:
"The rite is performed by slaves who, as soon as it is done, are drowned in the lake. In this
way mystery begets dread and a pious ignorance concerning what that sight may be which only those
who are about to die are allowed to see."
Obviously, that kind of thing would have disappeared with the spread of Christianity.
Human sacrifice does not need to lead to cannibalism. I'm not aware of any written or archeological evidence for any religiously-inspired cannibalism in Europe or in the Middle East.
Oh, I thought we were talking about cannibalism.
ReplyDeleteDon't you have to eat the Albinos to get the protection against AIDS?
Let's see Bono tackle this one.
ReplyDeleteCome on, guys -- it isn't only the Africans.
ReplyDeleteChinese were still sacrificing children to animist gods very recently. Qing emperors (17th-20th centuries) were forced to prohibit the practice by law. They may still do so in certain far-flung areas in China, for all I know.
Hindus still sacrifice widows occasionally.
And, you know, it probably does happen from time to time in the backwoods/nether regions here in the US.
Human sacrifice will happen wherever we have a breakdown of civilization, which is occurring here now, so I wouldn't at all be surprised to hear of some credible incidents in the US in the near future.
Count me among the anti-anti sodomites who haunts iSteve I guess.
ReplyDeleteAnd how is Uganda about to get gays under control - by instituting the death penalty as feared? I'd like to hear a coherent argument in favor of punishing homosexuality by death.
It surprises me that you're not up to date on South African muti killings. This recent news item predicts a bumper year given the World Cup. And the South African police has a special unit to deal with them.
ReplyDeleteAs for human sacrifice in North America surely you can remember the Satanic abuse scandal of the 1980s and early 90s?
Bill,
ReplyDeleteJust because this happens in Uganda doesn't mean it is routine for Sub-Saharan Africa. I personally know of Ugandans who live and work here in Canada who think the people who believe in the witchcraft pulp in Uganda to be nutters.
Human sacrifice was practiced in pagan Northern Europe until Christianity came along.
ReplyDeleteThe last remnants of pagan Northern Europe were not converted to Christianity until after 1000 a.d., so human sacrifice was practiced there relatively recently.
From Queen Victoria's diaries:
ReplyDelete"Then he [Prime Minister Lord Melbourne], and also I, looked at a new work called Sketches of the People and the Country of the Island of [New] Zealand, which are very well done. Lord Melbourne said, in opening it, 'They [Maoris] are a fine race, but they eat men, and they say it's almost impossible to break them of it.' He further added, 'There are no animals whatever there [what about sheep? - Arnold] and therefore they are obliged to eat men.' Lady Mulgrave observed that she thought they only eat their enemies; Lord Melbourne said, 'I fancy they eat them pretty promiscuously'."
Not sure when the Maoris lost interest in cannibalism.
So, how long will it be before they find a way to blame whitey?
ReplyDeleteOff-topic tip. Drudge links "Immigrants riot in Italy amid racial unrest."
ReplyDeletehttp://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LDE60716O.htm
Not inherently surprising, but telling its gotten bad enough to get through the multi-culti filter, and probably a picture of things to come for the US if we continue to import unassimilating immigrants.
My vague impression is that Islam is the best at stamping out human sacrifice in Africa, better than Christianity at this job.
ReplyDelete"Not inherently surprising, but telling its gotten bad enough to get through the multi-culti filter, and probably a picture of things to come for the US if we continue to import unassimilating immigrants."
ReplyDeleteWhy do isteve posters always warn of impending doom for this country, lest we deport every brown person (legal or illegal) in America?
I guess you guys have been seeing too many old Mad Max movies or you are just plain racist pigs (I am betting on the latter).
Unlike most here, I live in a state that is majority non-white (CA) and guess what: This state does not resemble a scene from "The Road Warrior."
Unlike most here, I live in a state that is majority non-white (CA) and guess what: This state does not resemble a scene from "The Road Warrior."
ReplyDeleteYour gubernator, up in Sacramento, begs to differ.
[And he's an immigrant himself.]
Kalifornia, as currently constructed, will NEVER AGAIN have a balanced budget.
N.E.V.E.R.
It will NEVER happen.
N.E.V.E.R.
ReplyDeleteHow far back in time do we have to go to find this kind of stuff widespread among Caucasian people? 4,000 years? When did human sacrifice die out in the Middle East? What about in Europe?
Oh, I dunno. I figure that we will hear about it happening all over Manhattan on a future episode of Law and Order.
Probably happens quite regularly in Canada and the northern states of the US as well.
ReplyDeleteChinese were still sacrificing children to animist gods very recently. Qing emperors (17th-20th centuries) were forced to prohibit the practice by law. They may still do so in certain far-flung areas in China, for all I know
Would you care to provide a cite for that?
AFAIK, animism has not been a big religion in China for a long time. You know, thinks like Buddhism, Confucianism, etc, have held sway there for a long time.
"Your gubernator, up in Sacramento, begs to differ.
ReplyDelete[And he's an immigrant himself.]
Kalifornia, as currently constructed, will NEVER AGAIN have a balanced budget.
N.E.V.E.R.
It will NEVER happen.
N.E.V.E.R."
And this relates to "The Road Warrior"/doomsday scenario of " the immigrants will kill us all" how?
It has been years since the USA has had a "balanced budget" (the USA has been running a deficit for a long time).
You know, I don't care much for the low-IQ hoards who are taking over the world.
ReplyDeleteAnd it's all to easy to make jokes about them.
But as stupid as these poor children are, they're still human - can you imagine the sheer horror [not to mention the pain] that they must experience as they're sacrificed [or, God forbid, eaten]?
Better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck...
all to = all too
ReplyDeleteAll this talk of cannibalism reminds me of the film "The Road" that came out this past November based on Cormac McCarthy's novel of the same name.
ReplyDeleteIt was a good movie, much better than that overhyped snoozefest "Avatar."
Which reminds me, I don't think Steve ever reviewed "The Road." Is this due to editorial changes at Taki's Mag?
Ancient Phoenicians and Carthaginians (ancestors of the modern Lebanese and to a smaller
ReplyDeleteextent of the modern Tunisians and Algerians) sometimes sacrificed their own children to the Gods up until their conquest by the Romans roughly 2200 years ago. However, no one there was eating the children. The Romans were scandalized regardless, calling the Carthaginians savages. Some modern historians tried to brush this off by suggesting that Roman writers invented the whole thing to slander their Carthaginian enemies, but then mass deposits of infants' bones were found in Tunisia in sacrificial contexts, confirming the story.
And the Romans killed so many of their own children, in the words of one historians we have unearthed Roman sewers clogged with the bones of baby girls. I guess it's somehow better if you don't say a prayer first?
1.3 million abortions a year in the US kinda puts Uganda in the shade.
At least they've figured out another way to deal with overpopulation, however gruesome this may be.
ReplyDeleteWhy do isteve posters always warn of impending doom for this country, lest we deport every brown person (legal or illegal) in America?
ReplyDeleteBecause unassimilated immigration has worked out so well for France, Italy and Britain. Because multiple cultures worked out so well for Serbia/Kosovo.
Anyway, despite your lame attempt at a straw man, it's not deportation I'm after for its own sake, and certainly not deportation based on skin color, its assimilation. And failing assimilation, we don't need a roundup as much as we need to close the borders and end direct and indirect welfare and subsidies to immigrants. America did a respectable job of assimilating immigrants up until the 1960's immigration "reform," after which we stopped abruptly. In fact we now actively discourage it.
The history of peoples separated by language and culture but bound together by proximity and nation is not happy. And European countries including Italy are roughly a generation ahead of us down this path, giving us a useful look at where we're headed.
For that matter, on hearing of racial tension between immigrants and nativists in another country with high immigration, why is your response a shrug of the shoulders? If you read the article, the natives don't come off any better than the immigrants, at least not the ones who started the trouble. So I'm not just bashing the darker-skinned immigrants, I'm pointing out that hey, they're all in a bad spot with no good way out. And it's the same spot we're putting ourselves in. If you think iSteve readers are racist for talking about issues of loyalty and culture now, give the US twenty years and ask a working class white man how he feels about Spanish-speaking welfare recipients. And ask yourself where we go from there, cause its not likely to be pretty.
Is this something that some (primitive) peoples do when times get tough, like if there's an impending famine?
ReplyDeleteI mean, they know someone's gonna die during a famine -- a lot of people, in fact. So, why not curb the population beforehand? And, who are you gonna cull? Well, some young kids. Shame, but then the adults may have better chances to live another day and make more kids later.
Of course, most people couldn't think so rationally about such an option (and I'm not advocating it!), so they wrap it all up in some religious mumbo-jumbo to rationalize it.
How far back in time do we have to go to find this kind of stuff widespread among Caucasian people? 4,000 years? When did human sacrifice die out in the Middle East? What about in Europe?
ReplyDeleteI dunno. One could make the case that the World Wars, the holocaust, the blood-lettings in communist countries, the 'War on Terror', etc. are expressions of atavistic urges. The gods' thirst for blood must be slaked.
We in the west are very much into human sacrifice... Abortion and Euthanasia. They do it to propitiate success, we do it to propitiate success. Our definition of success differs.
ReplyDeleteThe Muslims also perform human sacrifice, but unlike the Aztecs they do it without ritual and for any (rather immediate) cause that might suit them. No fantastic robes, no calendar dates, no pomp and circumstance, but for RATIONAL purpose (to disrupt this truce, that meeting, that agreement, etc.).
There will always be human sacrifice is one shape or another... And those with a higher IQ might give it a fancy name, but it is and remains human sacrifice.
Dienekes blog on cannibalism in China:
ReplyDeletehttp://dienekes.50webs.com/blog/archives/000498.html
"We need to remind ourselves that the Chinese people are not particularly different from the other races of the world as far as the practice of survival cannibalism is concerned. When it comes to learned cannibalism, however, its practice is quite different. Worthy of note here is the fact that some types of learned cannibalism are found only in China. This study will attempt to examine this unique phenomenon."
"Particularly in ancient times, learned cannibalism was often practiced in China for culinary appreciation, and exotic dishes were prepared for jaded upper-class palates in times of health and/or sickness."
"As late as the 19th century, it was not unusual for Chinese executioners to eat the heart and brains of the criminals they disaptch. They also ate a portion of the human meat for health reasons, but when some extra meat was left, they sold it for profit."
"Apart from this, the Chinese often ate their enemies out of hatred or revenge during wartime."
"During World War II, hate-cannibalism is reported to have occurred in China. Later, as the civil war between the Communists and the Nationalists went on for control of China, some Communist soldiers were executed routinely in a far-interior district; and their flesh and bones were eaten out of a spirit of revenge. One American priest told of seeing a Chinese Nationalist officer cut out and eat the heart of a Chinese Communist."
"The many instances of cannibalism in China throughout antiquity serve as a prelude to the way that the practice of cannibalism later became an integral part of Chinese culture."
pp. 55-62: listings of Chinese surival cannibalism incidents Han to Ming (about one ever 1-2 lines)
"Cannibalism was also often involved in the punishmen of criminals in Imperial China. After having been publicly executed, the bodies of the criminals were made available for public exhibition and consumption."
"In short the Chinese people used humans not only for food and medicine, but they also expressed their feelings of hatred or revenge by publicly eating the flesh and bones of their fellow men."
"In April 882, when the price of one tou (peck of rice went up to 30 min in Chang-an the rebels captured by government troops were sold as food."
"According to a more recent study, Chinese soldiers stationed in Taiwan before the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895 used to eat human flesh of the aborigines like pork; they could buy it at the marketplace. Human flesh was considered as a source of protein and a way to increase male sexual stamina."
"One Western observer said that the most shocking consequence of famine was the rapid spread of cannibalism... The Roman Catholic Bishop of Shansi, ... reported... "... now they kill the living to have them for food. Husbands eat their wives. Parents eat their sons and daughters, and children eat their parents." This was confirmed by a Chinese district magistrate, who made the following observations:
... a grandson chopped his grandomother to pieces, a niece boiled and ate her own aunt ..."
Armin Meiwes is in prison in Germany for killing a supposedly willing victim, and eating parts of his body.
ReplyDeletethe 'War on Terror'... atavistic urges
ReplyDeleteOh come on.
Did you not watch the people jump off the World Trade Center rather than suffer the heat of the jet fuel as it burned?
Jesus Christ.
An African told me that when a local king dies (they still have kings who have no official authority, they sound like mob bosses the way he describes them), they'll kidnap a few kids and bury them with the king or something like that. People keep their kids inside at those times to avoid that.
ReplyDeleteGood point regarding abortion. How many human fetuses have we sacrificed to the god of Choice?
ReplyDeleteThe question is rhetorical but I'll answer it nevertheless. Since 1973 we have killed over forty million. About twelve percent of these, or four million give or take, were second or third trimester abortions.
Who was it who said he trembled when he considered that God is just?
"My vague impression is that Islam is the best at stamping out human sacrifice in Africa, better than Christianity at this job."
ReplyDeleteYes, and despite permitting polygamy, it's more successful at suppressing the kind of behaviour that leads to AIDS.
"Oh, I dunno. I figure that we will hear about it happening all over Manhattan on a future episode of Law and Order."
ReplyDeleteDown in some hidden crypt beneath the headquarters of Goldman Sachs, no doubt.
"Wasn't New England witch burning a human sacrifice to assuage the gods?
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem_witch_trials"
God, not gods.
Please don't just repeat old, received info without fact-checking, however satisfying it is. No witches were burned in New England or anywhere else in the "new world" because they were not burned in England. The penalty for witchcraft was hanging. One of the accused was pressed to death, but even that was preferable to tearing of flesh and impaling, as practiced in Germany and some eastern countries. By English law, burning was for female traitors (this included women who killed their husbands, or, oddly, who were counterfiters) and heretics of both sexes. Male traitors were drawn and quartered, and this happened once, and only once thank God, in New England about 1675 (a white soldier who had supposedly betrayed his own to the Indians.) A few years after the New England trials, official apoligies were made for the whole dreadful mess, a ritual that foresees the 20th century. The witch craze lasted about 200 years in Europe, roughly 1460 to 1660 and the Salem trials were almost somewhat anomalous considering the time and place. Still, it keeps reminding us that anomalies signify.
In any case, the scale was nowhere near what is going on Africa, and the New England settlers were also doing things like setting up universities and inventing stuff. Ben Franklin would be born not long after. Makes a difference.
I doubt Whiskey's take. I think he is making things up to make Germans look bad. Must be that ingrained Scotch-Irish prejudice against things Germanic.
ReplyDeleteI think Steve here is the only conservative I've ever (virtually) met who's read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
ReplyDeleteThe sort of mind that can contain HBD and Hunter S. Thompson is truly to be admired.
Steve, you are really cool.
I'm sure they'll all turn into Swedish-Americans once they come here via the "diversity lottery".
ReplyDeleteI live in a state that is majority non-white (CA) and guess what: This state does not resemble a scene from "The Road Warrior."
ReplyDelete_________
Just because you are too young to remember what CA was like 30-50 years ago, doesn't mean it has not changed significantly for the worse. I remember how awesome CA was in the early 70's. No comparison to today.
"Anyway, despite your lame attempt at a straw man, it's not deportation I'm after for its own sake, and certainly not deportation based on skin color, its assimilation."
ReplyDelete__________
All I want for immigration control is RULE OF LAW which is something that seems to have passed into history. People who come illegally should be deported. Just plain enforce the rule of law that our representatives enacted in our lawfully elected legislature.
There is nothing inhumane about expecting foreign nationals to live in their own countries. We aren't being cruel.
"Did Christianity Cause the Crash?"
ReplyDeleteSteve,
The Right needs to come up with a catchphrase that describes the now-common lefty-media tactic of the deliberate misassignation of blame for whatever unfortunate event.
I haven't thought up any as of yet.
"False fingerpointing"
"bum steer"
"Deliberate slander"
"Mis-blamed"
Lawrence Auster has noted that the media uses exceedingly passive language in describing crimes by Muslims.
Auster mentioned a crime in Sweden where a Muslim man stalked and shot to death a woman and four coworkers in terms that didn't let you know a Muslim immigrant killed a Swede or anyone else. The subtitle to the story went something like: "Gun death raises questions about the right to bear arms in a country where hunting is popular".
The whole tone there is to mis-assign blame psychologically in the collective mind. The Right needs to take a tactic of the left and use it against them by giving explicit -names- to the tactic, so we can identify them and expose them with a clinical-sounding air, as if we were discussing a mental patient's progress condescendingly, just like the left does to the right. The left is doing this all the time now in service to hiding the effects of illegals. We need to come up with a catchy phrase people will remember and use it constantly so that it sticks in minds.
I guess you guys have been seeing too many old Mad Max movies or you are just plain racist pigs (I am betting on the latter).
ReplyDeleteWhy does Troof continue to attempt these tired last-century ad hominems as if they are going to have any effect on the commenters here?
Some of us have been living in places like, say, California for several decades and have watched the visible decline. Surely you've noticed we're in the middle of a global depression that germinated in the manufactured need for more minority home ownership, or is you affirmative action job so secure that you can ignore such things?
Jesus some mornings I wish I never read your blog. This is too depressing. Maybe Kipling was right both ways.
ReplyDeleteIt really is White Mans Burden.
Lost Pilgrim
"All this talk of cannibalism reminds me of the film "The Road" that came out this past November based on Cormac McCarthy's novel of the same name."
ReplyDeleteThis was a decent movie.
However, I can't believe that everyone would resort to cannibalism so easily.
Couldn't they have grown edible wild mushrooms in their dark basements?
There also appeared to be enough light to grow certain edible plants if you just made a green house.
-Unlike most here, I live in a state that is majority non-white (CA) and guess what: This state does not resemble a scene from "The Road Warrior."-
ReplyDeleteYou don't remember the pursuit of OJ?
"l said...
ReplyDeleteI dunno. One could make the case that the World Wars, the holocaust, the blood-lettings in communist countries, the 'War on Terror', etc. are expressions of atavistic urges. The gods' thirst for blood must be slaked."
I was going to make much the same point. One might add to your list the terrors conducted during the french and russian revolutions.
On the subject of Islam being opposed to human sacrifice, I seem to recall, soon after 9/11, reading excerpts from Mohammed Atta's diary, in which he admonishes himself to kill the crew of the plane he intends to hijack much as he would a sacrificial animal. And of course there are the numerous muslim suicide bombers, whose acts are not unlike a ritual of human sacrifice.
Truth:
ReplyDelete"Unlike most here, I live in a state that is majority non-white (CA) and guess what: This state does not resemble a scene from "The Road Warrior.""
Eh, have you seen the *first* Mad Max movie? Try comparing *that* to your California.
We won't be at the second movie for at least ten years I'd think.
“Our breast echoes forever with the cries, ‘In murdering goodness we sinned,’ and ‘By murdering goodness we were saved.’ ‘The lamb is innocent and must not be killed,’ ‘The dead lamb brings us salvation,’ so we live in chaos. This state is the less likely to be relieved because those who defend the rock are too cunning to commit their case to terms that could be grasped and disputed.”
ReplyDelete- Rebecca West, “Black Lamb and Grey Falcon”
I always think of cannibalism whenever I go over the Donner Pass on the way to Reno. But I think that doesn't count. Anymore than does the cannibalism of city dwellers under siege, if it did then Europe probably has had more cannibalism than black Africa, if only because of more cities, more city walls and more advanced armies.
ReplyDeleteNo, people are not really concerned when four guys on a life raft decide to eat the fifth guy - the one no one liked anyway. What is shocking is public socially approved cannibalism when you are not starving.
Bokassa was tried and convicted of cannibalism in a court of law. So was the Japanese island commandant from whom the senior George Bush narrowly escaped. Rather less reliable are the persistent web rumors that the younger George Bush ate parts of young children for breakfast each day.
There was an anthropologist who published an opinion that as every culture on earth had some stories about cannibalism this was proof that cannibalism was therefore a myth. Maybe I'm not being fair to his argument. I was never quite able to follow that logic.
I dunno. One could make the case that the World Wars ...
ReplyDeleteDo you think the USA should have stayed out of WWII?
Yes or no?
this will never make it past komment kontrol but...
ReplyDeleteSir Richard Francis Burton believed that a priest in Damascas was ritually murdered by Jews... and the son of an Italian rabbi came out with a book a couple of years ago that said yes, a small sect of askanazi did actually ritually murder Christians. Needless to say the book was not only removed from the shelves, but destroyed (much like Burton's manuscript).
Like I said, this will never make it past Komment Kontrol
Will the anonymous dork please stop whining about "Komment Kontrol"?
ReplyDeleteI have gone back to read many of your articles dating back to 1995(?) and I noticed that you've slowly abandoned your analytical, somewhat disspassionate/objective voice
ReplyDeleteand you've gotten more polemical.
This post is simple a reposting of a BBC story. What is so non-objective and polemical about that?
Nobody's bringing up the obvious fact that cannibalism has a disparate impact!
ReplyDelete"My vague impression is that Islam is the best at stamping out human sacrifice in Africa, better than Christianity at this job."
ReplyDeleteSteve,
Check out the CIA World Fact Book. Islam also does the best job stamping out AIDS. Christianity is a close second with animists and others a very distant third.
One reason I've heard given is that liberals (working as peacekeepers and other aid workers) tend to work in the Europhilic countries that are, of course, Christian countries and where missionaries have been and still work. The liberals help corrupt the Christian Africans.
I think there is definitely something to this, but more importantly, Islam puts more emphasis on personal behavior than Christianity currently does and is thus far more conservative.
David Davenport said...
ReplyDeleteI dunno. One could make the case that the World Wars ...
Do you think the USA should have stayed out of WWII?
Yes or no?
Yes.
"This post is simple a reposting of a BBC story. What is so non-objective and polemical about that?"
ReplyDeleteIt constitutes a hate quote. :-)
To all the commenters who have compared human sacrifice and cannibalism which was
not caused by starvation to terrorism, abortion and the world wars:
Rational human beings can decide that they don't want a kid at this or that particular time.
Rational human beings can also end up on opposite sides of wars - happens all the time. Life is a Darwinian struggle for survival and wars will always be a part of that. From a certain perspective it's always smart and good to win and it's always stupid and bad to lose. The mere fact that a man has willingly participated in a war says almost nothing about him other than that he's not a coward. From this perspective wars can be quite rational and each side can be right to celebrate its heroes. Of course I hope that every terrorist caught rots in jail or is executed, and more generally I hope that the side I happen to be on wins all of the conflicts it enters, but I can also see the bigger Darwinian picture.
Now, you're comparing all this to people who kill albinos so that they could use their body parts for luck. That's a qualitatively different level of stupidity.
What IS the bigger picture here? There is none.
I just don't see this comparison as very apt.
Some on the cutting edge of what Paul Gottfried now refers to as the Alternative Right seem to prefer Neopaganism to Christianity. This story should serve to remind them that they should be careful what they wish for.
ReplyDeleteI say this as one who is not religious, merely prudent enough to fear radical social changes that bring about unintended consequences.
Truth said ...[The Road]was a decent movie. However, I can't believe that everyone would resort to cannibalism so easily. Couldn't they have grown edible wild mushrooms in their dark basements? There also appeared to be enough light to grow certain edible plants if you just made a green house.
ReplyDelete...
I enjoyed "The Road" but it starts falling apart if you think about it realistically, rather than as some sort of metaphor. I couldn't understand how the people who were alive fed themselves, especially those large gangs. Most canned food would be no good 10 years after a disaster. (I had to throw out a lot of Y2K supplies a couple of years ago.) How does a guy end up with two bullets for his gun? It seems to me there's plenty of ammo in this country. Also, I couldn't see why everyone ended up in rags. I have enough clothes stashed in my closet to last me the rest of my life, especially if I ever get skinny again.
As far as cannibalism, in the circumstances depicted--people but no animals--I imagine a lot of people might decide to sample some "long pig."
Rational human beings can decide that they don't want a kid at this or that particular time...
ReplyDeleteNow, you're comparing all this to people who kill albinos so that they could use their body parts for luck. That's a qualitatively different level of stupidity.
What IS the bigger picture here? There is none.
I just don't see this comparison as very apt.
You aren't understanding the comparison. It's not rational, Darwinian, or any of your other adjectives to have a culture where people feel free to engage in those actions which produce children which they slaughter by the millions. It's barbaric and savage and it is *worse* that it happens in Uganda because it is much harder for someone in Uganda to rise above savagery than it is for us.
Note that this is true even if you do not believe that what is being killed is a child. How exactly did we get to the point that more than a million American women a year undergo a painful and humiliating medical procedure, one that is not riskfree? Perhaps if you don't believe that a child is being killed, a better comparison is to the barbaric and savage practice of FGM. But we do it to ourselves. This is so much worse.
"and you've gotten more polemical.
ReplyDeleteWhat's going on?"
He's also has more sympathy for white nationalism.
Some on the cutting edge of what Paul Gottfried now refers to as the Alternative Right seem to prefer Neopaganism to Christianity.
ReplyDeleteScratch a Libertarian, get a Stalinist.
>Scratch a Libertarian, get a Stalinist.<
ReplyDeleteI have absolutely no idea if you mean that the people I'm reffering to are Stalinists, or if that remark is directed at me. And who said anything about Libertarians? And why Stalin, anyhow?
"Human sacrifice has been a traditional population regulation mechanism: Your village gets too many children. It gets hard to feed everybody, even in good times. Then you have a drought. Things get really bad. What do you do? Sacrifice a bunch of children. Eat their livers. Ask the gods for rain. There are fewer mouths to feed and eventually it rains again, so problem solved."
ReplyDeletePlease, think before writing stuff like this. The number of cases of child sacrifice in places like Uganda aren't anywhere near enough to have a significant effect on overall population.
Whiskey is making even less sense than usual:
ReplyDelete"The correlation with Matriarchy and this sort of behavior is very strong. While there are many things against Islam, human sacrifice and cannibalism are not among them.
Generally, you see this hyper-masculinity and paganistic, pantheistic superstition among Matriarchal peoples. Patriarchies can be plenty ugly, but not in this way.
Terrible, really. Northern Germanic Europeans used to indulge in this, so too the Celts, until the practice was wiped out by newly Christian kings. Charlemagne, IIRC, fought a War with the Saxons killing estimated around 125,000, considerable amount of the population in those days, to wipe out paganism, and in particular sacrifices to Wotan. The Old Norse and Celtic gods were always hungry for Blood. [This was IIRC from memory, around 900 AD or so. The true story of Christianization of Europe AFTER the Romans is hardly ever told because Europeans don't want to believe they were that bloody or primitive. But they were.]"
Those German pagans you hate weren't a Matriarchy, Whiskey! You make no sense whatsoever; you just want to put all the things you hate (women, Germans, pagans, whatever) into a single basket - your strawman basket.
Human sacrifice was dying out in pagan Europe before the Christians arrived. As with the case with ancient Greece and the ancient Hebrews, they figured out on their own that ritual human sacrifice wasn't a great idea. They didn't need any Christians to tell them that. Charlemagne slaughtered the Saxons because they rejected Christianity (and by extension, the rule of Charlemagne), not because they were practicing human sacrifice. And where do you get your absurd numbers from?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlemagne
"In the summer of 779, he again invaded Saxony and reconquered Eastphalia, Engria, and Westphalia. At a diet near Lippe, he divided the land into missionary districts and himself assisted in several mass baptisms (780). He then returned to Italy and, for the first time, there was no immediate Saxon revolt. In 780 Charlemagne decreed the death penalty for all Saxons who failed to be baptised, who failed to keep Christian festivals, and who cremated their dead. Saxony had peace from 780 to 782.
He returned in 782 to Saxony and instituted a code of law and appointed counts, both Saxon and Frank. The laws were draconian on religious issues, and the indigenous forms of Germanic polytheism were gravely threatened by Christianisation. This stirred a renewal of the old conflict. That year, in autumn, Widukind returned and led a new revolt, which resulted in several assaults on the church. In response, at Verden in Lower Saxony, Charlemagne allegedly ordered the beheading of 4,500 Saxons who had been caught practising their native paganism after conversion to Christianity, known as the Massacre of Verden ("Verdener Blutgericht"). The massacre triggered three years of renewed bloody warfare (783-785). During this war the Frisians were also finally subdued and a large part of their fleet was burned. The war ended with Widukind accepting baptism."
This thing about pagan ritual human sacrifice is mostly a convenient red herring used by Christian conservatives to divert attention away from the many centuries of bloody Christian lunacy (burning of heretics, witch hunting, religious wars, the Inquisition, internal Crusades, ie, Crusades against European pagans and heretics, the Albigensians/Cathars, "kill them all, God will know his own", etc), that killed far, far more innocent people in Christian Europe than were ever ritually sacrificed in pagan Europe.
You really think that all ritual human sacrifice is the same? You think that all pagans were like the Aztecs? Really? You're misinformed.
"The last remnants of pagan Northern Europe were not converted to Christianity until after 1000 a.d., so human sacrifice was practiced there relatively recently."
ReplyDeleteLithuania was thoroughly pagan until 1387. Almost a thousand years of bloody wars and crusades were waged in Europe to impose Christianity and stamp out paganism, and it had nothing to due with eliminating human sacrifice, which was hardly a common practice of European pagans at the time, in any case. Stamping out paganism was about political control and expanding into new territory - ie, colonization and imperialism, plain and simple.
You don't need Christianity to get pagans to abandon human sacrifice. The ancient Greeks seemed to have done it pretty easily on their own long before Christianity. Paganism and human sacrifice are two entirely different matters. Frankly ritually killing a few slaves or criminals from time to time, as European pagans used to do, is not comparable to what is going on in Africa now, and it is hardly any worse than the kinds of nasty things that were considered normal under most of the history of Christianity - torture as public entertainment, burning people to death because they held "incorrect" beliefs about God, etc.
Not all "pagans" are alike, and not all "human sacrifice" is alike. Making the sweeping generalization that pagan Europe was "essentially the same" as animist sub-Saharan Africa, because both happen to practice human sacrifice, is just silly. Europe, lacking only urbanization, has been very advanced in many ways since the neolithic era. Sub-Saharan Africa has nothing to compare; their fetish for human sacrifice is a symptom of the problem, not the source, and converting them to Christianity or Islam will not fix their problems.
"Some on the cutting edge of what Paul Gottfried now refers to as the Alternative Right seem to prefer Neopaganism to Christianity. This story should serve to remind them that they should be careful what they wish for.
ReplyDeleteI say this as one who is not religious, merely prudent enough to fear radical social changes that bring about unintended consequences."
"Careful what they wish for"? Really? You think sub-saharan Africa is comparable culturally to Periclean Athens just because both happen to be "pagan"?
You do realize how silly it is to lump all practices labeled "ritual human sacrifice" into the same cultural category, as though the Aztecs were comparable to the Celts were comparable to the Phoenicians were/are comparable to sub-Saharan African animists simply because they all practiced/practice human sacrifice?
It's absurd. You might just as well say that all cultures are essentially the same if they have capital punishment. So the USA is essentially the same as Saudi Arabia! It's polemical nonsense.
You want dire warnings about unintended consequences and "be careful what you wish for"? Here's a taste of your own medicine (and I'm not fooled by the "I'm not religious": beware agnostics promoting Christian Conservatism): be careful about wanting to "return" to your Golden Age of Christianity. It wasn't as nice as some folks like to think it was.
The numbers of "neo-pagans" on the right is so absurdly small, it makes the dire warnings of the paleos appear even more ridiculous. Rightist neo-pagans are no more likely to be imposing their wishes on anyone anytime soon than Catholic Monarchists are. Both are simply mourning for lost pasts: they just disagree about how long ago we all took the wrong historical path.
The Right needs to come up with a catchphrase that describes the now-common lefty-media tactic of the deliberate misassignation of blame for whatever unfortunate event.
ReplyDeleteIt's called "scapegoating".
"David Davenport said...
ReplyDeleteDo you think the USA should have stayed out of WWII?
Yes or no?"
David Davenport: Are you a child molester?
Yes or no?
See there how easy it is to imply someone is a moral reprobate?
You know who likely was against American involvement in WWII?
One of the 400,000 American men who were killed in the war and who were drafted - i.e., who were never asked whether they wanted to fight in a war overseas, but who none-the-less were invited to share in the dying part of war.
***Albinos in sub-Saharan Africa have long been targets of persecution and now murder because of the belief that their body parts have special efficacy for witchcraft.***
ReplyDeleteIs this what Blombkamp was getting at with the Nigerian dealers in District 9, trying to eat Alien flesh?
I was going to make much the same point. One might add to your list the terrors conducted during the french and russian revolutions.
ReplyDeleteAnd Communist show trials, and cultural revolutions.
This thing about pagan ritual human sacrifice is mostly a convenient red herring used by Christian conservatives to divert attention away from the many centuries of bloody Christian lunacy (burning of heretics, witch hunting, religious wars, the Inquisition, internal Crusades, ie, Crusades against European pagans and heretics, the Albigensians/Cathars, "kill them all, God will know his own", etc), that killed far, far more innocent people in Christian Europe than were ever ritually sacrificed in pagan Europe.
ReplyDeleteDon't be pathetic. "Bloody Christian lunacy" is a convenient red herring used by various and sundry anti-Christians (atheists, neo-pagans, etc) to depict the usual unpleasant business of human strife as something somehow uniquely dependant upon Christianity.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteDon't be pathetic. "Bloody Christian lunacy" is a convenient red herring used by various and sundry anti-Christians (atheists, neo-pagans, etc) to depict the usual unpleasant business of human strife as something somehow uniquely dependant upon Christianity.
ReplyDeleteBut some Christians go around claiming that Christianity is uniquely civilising, but there's no proof of any dramatic change in behaviour or improvement in quality of life after Christianisation, which is ironically consistent with what you are saying now.
One thing that we do know is that Christians and particularly Christian clergy generally support causes that will, if unopposed, destroy western civilisation. The pope was in the news today spouting vaguely creationist cant about human nature. He was going to bat for African immigrants in Italy.
You're not making too much sense either. Religiously motivated wars were only part of Christianity. Much charity, submilimely beautiful music and art. While I don't know what the stats were regarding human sacrifice (I don't think it was too common even among the Druids), Christianity did organize Europeans around a common belief system. In the beginning most accepted with enthusiasm, not the least being the Irish (Island of saints and scholars.) It was the Irish who willingly went as scholars and "saints", not warrior, to convert central Europe.
ReplyDeleteI am not really trying to be an apologist for Christianity--that is too much to ask of a few paragraphs. But I am weary of those who relentlessly concentrate on the evils of that society. Science and progress developed in Europe at least partly BECAUSE of Christianity, not in spite of it. The better angels of its nature did distill into humanism and "progress" to a degree unknown in other parts of the world, or in history. Demonizing Christians is as wearying and dishonest as some of the wackier feminists describing all sexual intercourse as "rape."
Good refutation of an argument I never made, Aunt Sally.
ReplyDeleteLook, I’m neither unfamiliar with, nor unsympathetic toward, Gore Vidal’s contention that Europe took a wrong turn when it settled on worship of a single insanely jealous Sky God. That remarkable author usually manages to get his analyses right. I just don’t see how any good can come from the replacement of one Supreme Being--Who at least has had the good manners to have made Himself pretty scarce lately--with a multitude of equally non-existent deities dusted off by obese lesbians and avid collectors of German war memorabilia. Western Civilization desperately needs to move forward again, not backward.
A point of historical order: the ancient Saxons were an aggressive lot and Charlemagne decided to put an end to their depredations against his empire with the sword and the baptismal font. You need not admire his methods to acknowledge his justification (i.e, to make an omelette, you need to break some eggs).
ReplyDelete"tiki said...
ReplyDeleteWill the anonymous dork please stop whining about "Komment Kontrol"?"
Seconded! The repetetive (and unamusing) ironic use of K's makes you sound like a retard. The mental image of the user that it conjures up is of one of those unwashed loser nobodies whom the LaRouche cult used to send to college campuses to hand out their literature.
The mental image of the user that it conjures up is of one of those unwashed loser nobodies whom the LaRouche cult used to send to college campuses to hand out their literature.
ReplyDeleteYou mean like former LaRouchie-dork David Goldman aka "Spengler"? He seems to be doing ok these days.....he's on CNBC sometimes and has a fancy blog at "First Things" and everything.