Primitive superstition wins again as a good man is murdered

Tragic news out of Guatemala.

A RESEARCHER for a London University has been burnt alive by violent mob after being accused of practising witchcraft in his homeland.

Domingo Choc Che, 55, an expert on traditional herbal medicine, had been working with a team from University College London (UCL), before being set upon by a group of men in his native Guatemala. The violent group accused Mr Choc Che of causing the death of a member of the community after he had given medicine and for carrying out a ceremony on the grave.

Disturbing pictures shows huge plumes of smoke bellowing from the victim who desperately tried to save his life by running through the field.

Moments later Mr Choc Che collapsed and died at the scene before emergency services were able to attend.

. . .

The Mayan medicine specialist had been working as a collaborator on a UCL pharmaceutical project ... The scientific project involved researching biodiversity use of Mayan medicine in Guatemala.

There's more at the link.

I was very sad to read that news, but not surprised.  In any primitive culture, anything that doesn't fit the traditional narrative is regarded with suspicion and distrust.  From attacks on medical teams trying to use modern medicine to treat Ebola in Africa, to the burning alive of suspected "witches", to the murder of albinos in Tanzania to obtain their body parts for shamanistic rituals and "medicine", to the "cargo cults" of the Pacific, the problem of primitive, uneducated, non-scientific (or rather pre-scientific) culture is rampant in much of the Third World.

The biggest problem is not that such lack of understanding exists:  it's that those from a modern scientific background can't understand or appreciate the depths of superstition confronting them in such places.  They don't take enough time or trouble to understand local beliefs and attitudes, or to explain what they're doing and why.  They simply press on with their studies and research, because they don't want to "waste time" explaining what they know locals are unlikely to understand.

That's what leads to tragedies like this.  Because the locals feel ignored and "left out", they naturally put the worst possible interpretation on what they see the outsiders doing.  If that threatens the foundations of their belief system or culture, they're going to do something about it.  In this case, Mr. Choc Che was the victim of that response, with locals assuming his medicines had caused the death of the sick person he tried to help.

I experienced similar reactions in primitive African society.  I learned early on that one couldn't just hand out medicines.  It wasn't safe if improvement didn't result.  Rather, it was best to take the sick person to another location, where they could be treated by doctors and nurses without having suspicious family members hovering over them, ready to lash out at any sign that things weren't going well.

For those of my readers who may venture "off the beaten track" for any reason, tourism, research or whatever, please bear that in mind.  You're on someone else's turf.  You're the intruder, the outsider.  You can't assume that you're welcome, or that you're understood, or that you're free to do whatever you please.  Conformity to local customs and expectations is at least polite.  It may, at times, help to save your life.

Peter

Talk about ignorance on display!

It seems one, at least, of our news networks is so uneducated, ill-informed and grammatically backward that it can't find (or can't be bothered to hire) literate editors.  Courtesy of Divemedic, we find this:

Had they never heard of "Molotov cocktails"?  Are they historically as well as linguistically illiterate?  (Or, as Divemedic suggests, they may have been reporting on Jewish riots!)

Ye Gods and little fishes . . .




Peter

How is it possible for people to be this stupid?

I'm not on Facebook or similar services, so I appear to have missed the latest trend among some gun-owners (for which I'm devoutly grateful!).  However, Vice has enlightened me.

Gun people are taking pictures of themselves aiming weapons at their dicks. The safety is off, their finger hovers on the trigger, and the barrel of the weapon is pointed straight at their genitals . . . pointing a gun at your penis has . . . everything to do with ironically mocking basic safety in gun culture. The trend is about a year old and it was born in the fires of Facebook’s gun groups. On one side are responsible gun owners, on the other is a group of men aiming a deadly weapon at their dicks to prove a point that they can only vaguely explain.

Like with any other fandom, there’s levels to gun culture. In the online gun community there are "normies" and "fudds." Normies cover a range of people, anyone from a basic handgun owner to the completely uninitiated. Fudds—as in Bugs Bunny hunter Elmer Fudd—are the old heads, weirdos, and dedicated gun nuts. Some fudds hate normies and the way normies talk about guns. Even the normies who know their way around a firearm.

A chief complaint among fudds is the normie’s devotion to safety, typically manifested as knee-jerk praise of trigger discipline. For the uninitiated, watching trigger discipline refers to the act of keeping your finger off the trigger of a firearm until you’re ready to fire the weapon. It’s a safety basic, along with never pointing a gun at anyone or anything you don’t intend to harm, and always assuming a gun is loaded. Trigger and muzzle discipline will tell you a lot about a person holding a firearm. Typically, if they keep the muzzle away from the camera and their finger off the trigger—even while holding the grip—they know their way around a weapon.

. . .

To combat this apparent scourge of responsible gun ownership, some fudds have taken to posting pictures of themselves pointing allegedly loaded weapons at their own dicks, with their finger on the trigger. If this doesn’t make sense to you, you’re not alone.

There's more at the link.

All I can say is, I want nothing to do with idiots who behave like that.  If they can behave so stupidly, they're dangerous to be around.  They should stay as far away from me as possible, thank you very much!  I certainly won't be numbering them among my friends;  and if any of my friends were to behave that way, they wouldn't remain my friends any longer than it took for me to find out.  As Einstein observed, "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."  They perfectly illustrate his point by their actions.

However, I don't want them to stop.  In fact, I want them to make sure their guns are loaded, then carry right on behaving like that.  You see, that way, sooner or later (hopefully the former), they're going to shoot off the appendages for which they so clearly no longer have any rational use.  That done, they won't be reproducing more of their kind to plague the rest of us!

Idiots . . . blithering . . . one each . . . sheesh!!!




Peter

Sometimes the jokes write themselves . . .

I had to do a double-take at this headline:

Elvis Presley’s bedazzled jockstrap

hits auction block for $35K

I've heard about the dick-tates of fashion, but I never expected them to go to that extreme!




Peter

Pinky swear?

This news report made me do a double-take.

Shakespeare was right:

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Peter

EDITED TO ADD:  Overseas readers who may not understand the title of this post, see here.

"Totalitarianism doesn't shock us anymore"

That's Tucker Carlson's conclusion after talking with a business leader and examining various incidents of authoritarian overreach in this country during the current lockdown over the coronavirus pandemic.  He finds it very disturbing - as do I, and as should any American who believes in the Constitution bequeathed to us by our founding fathers.

Please make time to watch the segment below.  It's only about ten minutes long, and it's worth considering - and sharing with your family and friends.

Why doesn't totalitarianism shock us any longer?  Why are we willing to live with - or, rather, under - it in times of stress?  I'm not.  I've seen too much of it all over the world to be willing to permit it to flourish in my neighborhood.  If the Founding Fathers and their supporters had been of that mind, we'd never have had an American Revolution, and this country would never have existed as the beacon of independence, liberty and freedom that it became all over the world.

Why do we tolerate this?  And how far are we willing to go to stop it?

Please share this video segment with your family and friends, and ask them the same questions.  They need answering, and answering now, before such authoritarian bullying becomes the de facto response of our society in any crisis.

Peter