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(Al Jazeera) Sick Witchdoctors in Tanzania have a taste for white meat   (aljazeera.com) divider line 90
More: Sick, Tanzanian, Central Asian, sub-Saharan Africa, sun exposure, border region, taste, Islamism, birth defects  
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13294 clicks; posted to Main » on 09 Dec 2011 at 3:13 PM   |  Favorite    |   share:  Share on Twitter share via Email Share on Facebook   more»   |    Get this fabulous T-Shirt and impress the methane out of your friends! shirt it!



90 Comments   (+0 »)
   

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2011-12-09 03:10:51 PM
Kill Whitey?
 
2011-12-09 03:15:30 PM
Buncha bark-at-the-moon savages over there.
 
2011-12-09 03:17:34 PM
In before religion hate.
 
2011-12-09 03:18:07 PM
Diversity
 
2011-12-09 03:18:17 PM
Yeah, like I'll click an 'Al Jazera' link at work....
 
2011-12-09 03:19:14 PM
Subbie's mom is from Tanzania?
 
2011-12-09 03:19:41 PM
text please for non clickers
 
2011-12-09 03:20:02 PM
In a prepared statement, the accused said:

"Oo Eee oo ah ah! Ting tang, walla-walla bing-bang."
 
2011-12-09 03:20:27 PM
I have some lams that need castration.
 
2011-12-09 03:21:23 PM
Is there NOTHING a white person can't do?
 
2011-12-09 03:22:04 PM
This has been going on for so long. The tragic thing is that Tanzania has the highest albino birthrate in the world. Imagine being born in a world where you have pale skin under an African sun, you always stick out in the market/temple aaaaand motherfarkin witch-doctors are trying to eat you. Makes me feel like a wuss to whine so much about the cancellation of community.
 
2011-12-09 03:22:04 PM
Science can't prove that they aren't magical, therefore god magic.
 
2011-12-09 03:22:20 PM
Kumana Wanalaia: text please for non clickers

Try one of these historical threads on the subject:

11/29/09 (new window)

5/2/09 (new window)

or 5/6/10 (new window)

/bears repeating
 
2011-12-09 03:24:18 PM
But remember, all cultures are equal.
 
2011-12-09 03:25:01 PM
Looks like we'll have to send in Ralph Philips
 
2011-12-09 03:25:37 PM
Magnanimous_J: But remember, all cultures are equal.

Wrong. European-American culture is fat worse than all the rest.
 
2011-12-09 03:26:38 PM
I dunno... Even if I believed that albinos are magical, I still wouldn't kill them. Because, you know, that's mean.
 
2011-12-09 03:28:30 PM
Dammit, Africa!
 
2011-12-09 03:28:41 PM
Magnanimous_J: But remember, all cultures are equal.

Only the modern ones.
 
2011-12-09 03:29:04 PM
ObscureNameHere: In a prepared statement, the accused said:

"Oo Eee oo ah ah! Ting tang, walla-walla bing-bang."


And that's why I came in here - +1
 
2011-12-09 03:29:08 PM
I know I'm going to get flamed for this, but I must admit, I love white chocolate.
 
2011-12-09 03:31:05 PM
SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
media.tumblr.com
WATCH OUT!
 
2011-12-09 03:32:41 PM
ObscureNameHere: In a prepared statement, the accused said:

"Oo Eee oo ah ah! Ting tang, walla-walla bing-bang."


Approves:

2.bp.blogspot.com
 
2011-12-09 03:34:00 PM
Tanzania.

Must be about albinos.


/drtfa
//not eat da poo poo country
 
2011-12-09 03:35:27 PM
probesport: ObscureNameHere: In a prepared statement, the accused said:

"Oo Eee oo ah ah! Ting tang, walla-walla bing-bang."

And that's why I came in here - +1


You gonna mop that up or what?

/don't make me call the witch doctor on you!
 
2011-12-09 03:36:01 PM
If there were over 150,000 albinos there like the Albino Association says, and they're being eaten for medicine, why are there so many starving Africans there then? Huh?

/albino goes in, souffle comes out
//you can't explain that
 
2011-12-09 03:36:18 PM
Do the Winter brothers know of this? If not... should we tell them?
 
2011-12-09 03:37:10 PM
ordinarysteve: This has been going on for so long. The tragic thing is that Tanzania has the highest albino birthrate in the world. Imagine being born in a world where you have pale skin under an African sun, you always stick out in the market/temple aaaaand motherfarkin witch-doctors are trying to eat you. Makes me feel like a wuss to whine so much about the cancellation of community.

Yet, I'll bet they still have less of their taxes stolen to redistribute to their darker brethren than US whities do. So more money for guns and moats and stuff. It's all relative.
 
2011-12-09 03:38:50 PM
Its not the white you are supposed to go after. Ever hear the saying "Once you go black, you don't go back"?
Damnit Africa, get with the times!
 
2011-12-09 03:38:58 PM
FTFA: albinos increasingly subjected to murder and mutilation because of a completely spurious myth that albino body parts are effective in witchcraft rituals.

Well, this certainly doesn't sound like the Africa I know . . .
 
2011-12-09 03:39:06 PM
ObscureNameHere: Yeah, like I'll click an 'Al Jazera' link at work....

Really? I worked for the feds for 4 years, and they never had a problem w/ me going to Al Jazeera. Their news section is unbiased. (their opinion pieces, not so much).

/but as said above, this subject comes along every six months or so on Fark.
 
2011-12-09 03:43:37 PM
media.theonion.com

Obligatory (new window)
 
2011-12-09 03:47:42 PM
This sort of thing makes one more sympathetic to witch hunters, although not the kind of vicious SOBs that our own Western history records.

I am glad to see Al Jaz speaking out forthrightly against superstition.

We mustn't forget though, that our own ancestors were just as superstitious in the 1600s and some retain the belief in witchcraft and black magic even today, especially "fundamentalist" and evangelical Christians and their satanist competitors.

I read an interesting book on the subject of magic, religion and superstition. Each breeds the two others, with religions rising out of magical thinking and superstition, sinking back into them again, and magic leading to superstitions and superstitions to magic.

Each, in its own way, is an attempt to obtain power over the world through God, through ritual and sympathic magic, and through superstitious mockeries of both magical and religious practice.

Like the belief in luck or God, superstition aims at protecting the ego of the believer against imaginary or real harms, and to give them power over imaginary or real enemies and victims.

Currently, many churches (and mosques) in Africa are very like the more rambunctious Puritans were in the 1600s. The converts are new and thus tend to be waivering or fanatical (and often both), torn between superstitious beliefs and traditional religions (including Islam, which does not take kindly to converts, any more than the Roman Catholic Church did or does). As a result, they are prone to moral panics and to being mislead by ambitious, greedy and somewhat demented religious leaders who are getting rich off of their "flocks".

It's a shame. I hope that something can be done. I expect that a few generations will make a big difference, especially in countries where progress is being made towards good government and prosperity (and that is a number of countries in Africa despite what you may think or hear).

As the witch, Granny Weatherwax says to a priest of some god or other (probably the one with the Crocodile Head) in Terry Pratchett's Disworld novels, treating other people like things is sin. Both the superstitious and the newly religious are prone to falling under the sway of fire and brimstone preachers as well as witchdoctors and fraudsters (astrologers being just as bad as priests).

Let's hope for the best. If you have gods, pray to them for wisdom, peace and justice. Personally, I'd be tempted to think like one of my distant relations, a Royal Judge under Louis XIV, who famously said "We know how to hang in Canada." There are some crimes which are hard to forgive, let alone allow to go unpunished or underpunished by the Talon Law. Even so, I expect you can do nothing about mass ignorance except mass education and raising people up to a basic level of material and mental well-being.

Let's not forget that birth into abject poverty often causes retardation due to maternal malnutrition and poor obstretics, not to mention post-natal malnutrition and abuse. You have to lift people out of savage conditions if you want them to be civilized, and then you have to lift them a little higher still, because even "civilized" people are three meals from a barbarity that "savages" never know except when they are on the receiving end of it.

Even Civilized Christians, Muslims, Jews, etc., need to tame the beast within, although some of them do a poor job of it, even when their brains are not damaged by abuse and neglect.
 
2011-12-09 03:49:21 PM
Kumana Wanalaia: text please for non clickers

Albinism is a non-contagious, genetically inherited disorder, affecting about 1 in 20,000 men and women around the world, regardless of ethnicity and geographical location. Sufferers are afflicted by a congenital absence of melanin, a pigmentation defect in the hair, skin and eyes that causes vulnerability to sun exposure and bright light. Many have very poor vision as a consequence and in tropical countries especially they can be vulnerable to skin cancers if unprotected from the sun.

What albinism is absolutely not, is an indication that the afflicted person is any way invested with magical powers.

Though it might seem absurdly obvious, the point is worth stating so starkly because in parts of sub-Saharan Africa especially, albinos have traditionally faced discrimination and prejudice - innocent victims of a still widespread belief that the condition is in some way associated with the supernatural. To some, a white-skinned African person is seen as a kind of phantom or ghost, who rather than die will dissolve or disappear with the wind and rain. As a result, in some communities, albinos have been feared, shunned and socially marginalised.

Over the last five years in Tanzania, however, the situation has become much, much worse, with albinos increasingly subjected to murder and mutilation because of a completely spurious myth that albino body parts are effective in witchcraft rituals. Despite international outrage and repeated attempts by the Tanzanian government to stamp out this truly appalling practice, since it first came to light many albinos have been hunted down and attacked purely for their limbs and organs. Indeed the incidents seem to be increasing. Since 2008, at least 62 albinos have been killed in Tanzania, 16 have been violently assaulted and had their limbs amputated and the bodies of 12 albinos have been exhumed from graves and dismembered.

Against this background, it is perhaps not surprising that estimates of the numbers of albinos in Tanzania vary significantly. Officially there are around 5,000 registered, but the country's Albino Association says the real number is in excess of 150,000. They say that many albinos are still kept hidden by their families because of the stigma some associate with the condition or because of fear that they might be attacked.

In this remarkable episode of Africa Investigates, Tanzanian journalist Richard Mgamba, albino community representative Isaack Timothy and Ghanaian investigative journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas set out to discover what lies behind these sickening attacks and to uncover and confront some of those behind the grotesque trade in body parts for witchcraft rituals.

In the process they meet two albino children, victims of vicious assaults that occurred in the weeks the film was being made. One of them is a 12-year-old boy who had part of his hand cut off, allegedly with the connivance of his father who is now in police custody and awaiting trial. The other is a 16-year-old girl whose left arm was hacked off by a stranger with a machete.

But Anas, who goes undercover in the guise of a businessman seeking to get rich, also comes face to face with a witchdoctor who tries to sell him a potion containing ground up albino body parts. Not surprisingly, when the offer is made, Anas makes his abhorrence very plain.

Right from the start of this film, viewers may find some of the images disturbing.
 
2011-12-09 03:52:29 PM
Maak food die wit man
 
2011-12-09 03:52:38 PM
cdn.buzznet.com
I'll convert you!
Into a stew.
A nice little, white little, missionary stew.
Yes I'd eat you!
In a nice little, white little, soft little, tender little,
Juicy little, right little missionary stew.
 
TJT
2011-12-09 03:53:29 PM
Why not just capture one and then you have a magician whenever you need one?

/Just saying
 
2011-12-09 03:53:49 PM
'This is my blood. This is my body.'
 
2011-12-09 03:55:35 PM
They won't eat clowns however - they taste funny.
 
2011-12-09 04:00:11 PM
I love how the news media is basically like college. Come end of semester, you can always count on a couple students in your class choosing the same paper topic and thinking it's the first time anyone's really written about it...
 
2011-12-09 04:00:28 PM
What a bunch of dicks. They should all read the Star-Belly Sneetches by Dr. Seuss
 
2011-12-09 04:01:04 PM
Makes me wonder why black people who call themselves African-Americans would want to be associated with that hell-hole?

And if the so called poor in this country could visit some of the places in that video I doubt they would come back complaining about their living conditions here.
 
2011-12-09 04:01:36 PM
FTA: "What albinism is absolutely not, is an indication that the afflicted person is any way invested with magical powers."

How can the reporter make such a statement? Clearly, the reporter never tasted the succulent flesh of an albino and felt the overwhelming magical powers flowing their body, enabling them to fly, cure diseases and cast spells!


/Albino, the other, other white meat!
 
2011-12-09 04:03:19 PM
This is why I laugh when people want shipments of XO laptops air dropped into backwards countries. Don't try and stop any of this nonsense, some cheap laptops will educate them out of poverty.
 
2011-12-09 04:04:37 PM
Rhypskallion: 'This is my blood. This is my body.'

Because self-sacrifice and murder are exactly alike.
 
2011-12-09 04:06:23 PM
numbone: Makes me wonder why black people who call themselves African-Americans would want to be associated with that hell-hole?

And if the so called poor in this country could visit some of the places in that video I doubt they would come back complaining about their living conditions here.

img.curated.by
 
2011-12-09 04:08:26 PM
Khazar-Khum: Rhypskallion: 'This is my blood. This is my body.'

Because self-sacrifice and murder are exactly alike.


"After all, a murder is just an extroverted suicide!"
 
2011-12-09 04:11:09 PM
Wow, that movie was unbelievably depressing. Every time I think I've seen it all, I see an albino boy that looks a fair bit like my own son. I couldn't watch the whole thing.

/Wait...his dad set up that attack? fark me.
//fark Africa.
 
2011-12-09 04:11:22 PM
misanthropologist: I love how the news media is basically like college. Come end of semester, you can always count on a couple students in your class choosing the same paper topic and thinking it's the first time anyone's really written about it...

Somebody may have written acclaimed book on that very subject, which makes an excellent stocking stuffer and can be found at the fark store.

/waiting for my TF, Drew
 
2011-12-09 04:15:34 PM
unicron702: Kumana Wanalaia: text please for non clickers

Albinism is a non-contagious, genetically inherited disorder, affecting about 1 in 20,000 men and women around the world, regardless of ethnicity and geographical location. Sufferers are afflicted by a congenital absence of melanin, a pigmentation defect in the hair, skin and eyes that causes vulnerability to sun exposure and bright light. Many have very poor vision as a consequence and in tropical countries especially they can be vulnerable to skin cancers if unprotected from the sun.

Agreed with everything but the rate of albino-ism does vary greatly, and is the highest in sub Saharan Africa.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2211462/?tool=pmcentrez
 
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