July 13, 2015

"An Indian couple and four of their children were hacked to death by a mob of villagers who accused them of practicing witchcraft and making their children sick..."

"... police in the eastern state of Odisha said on Monday.
The victims were asleep in their mud house in the hamlet of Lahanda in Keonjhar district, when a group of around five people armed with axes broke in... The police reached the village in the early hours of Monday to find the mutilated bodies in pools of blood, an ax abandoned inside the hut, and a young boy still alive.... 'gasping between the dead bodies'....

In a separate incident, police on Monday recovered the remains of a man who was beaten to death and burnt by a mob over allegations of sorcery in Rayagada district, also in Odisha state....

"People believe in superstition because they do not have health care. They are uneducated. Unless we provide them these basic facilities, the situation will not improve," said Debendra Sutar, secretary of the Odisha Rationalist Society, a charity.

69 comments:

Gahrie said...

Remember folks...all cultures are equal.

Fernandinande said...

'According to Father Thomas, demonic activity has been increasing in the United States because people are choosing to be dissuaded away from God and opening portals such as New Age and witchcraft that are gateways to the demonic. “When faith becomes thin and Satan and agents of Satan move in, there are going to be effects,” he said.'

YoungHegelian said...

Sub-Saharan Africa is no picnic, either.

FleetUSA said...

Vestiges of pre-Industrial age civilizations still exist around the world.

Gahrie said...

@Fernandinande:

Get back to me when he starts hacking families to death.

Big Mike said...

@Gahrie, I agree. We are supposed to respect all cultures equally. That's what multiculturalism has been telling us for decades.

Drago said...

A series of rigorous and common sense axe control laws would have stopped this.

traditionalguy said...

I for one am proud to see Indian peasants taking care of their families by population control exercised by eugenic post Birth abortions of strange people. That many less demons and that many less carbon breathers leaving a foot print in the atmosphere.

It is the sweet smell like living space in the morning to Gaia.

jameswhy said...

I dunno about introducing modern medicine...sounds like these villagers would take that hocus-pocus (here...this little pill will fix you right up!) as the sorcerer's art and go all Lizzie Borden on their ass.

Smilin' Jack said...

"People believe in superstition because they do not have health care. They are uneducated. Unless we provide them these basic facilities, the situation will not improve," said Debendra Sutar, secretary of the Odisha Rationalist Society, a charity.

Hee...it won't improve even if you do:

McMartin preschool trial....In The Devil in the Nursery in 2001, Margaret Talbot for The New York Times summarized the case:

"When you once believed something that now strikes you as absurd, even unhinged, it can be almost impossible to summon that feeling of credulity again. Maybe that is why it is easier for most of us to forget, rather than to try and explain, the Satanic-abuse scare that gripped this country in the early 80s — the myth that Devil-worshipers had set up shop in our day-care centers, where their clever adepts were raping and sodomizing children, practicing ritual sacrifice, shedding their clothes, drinking blood and eating feces, all unnoticed by parents, neighbors and the authorities."[10]

Anonymous said...

"People believe in superstition because they do not have health care."
.
..
...
The fact that people this fucking retarded exist is the best argument against democracy one can imagine.

Skipper said...

Finally, a rational justification for ObamaCare.

Anonymous said...

Seriously. How can any human who's been alive long enough to speak English say something like that? The plain evidence in front of Debendra Sutar's eyes for her entire fucking life, every minute of every day, has been that "people believe in superstition" period full stop. Not because they don't "have health care." When you "have health care" (is that like having a bike or a set of cutlery?) your beliefs are the same as they were back when you didn't possess this thing called "health care." "Having" it didn't change anything. You're still the stupid person you were the day before someone "gave" you health care to "have".

Yet it's possible to be even stupider than these villagers. At least they weren't stupid enough to think that "health care" would fix their society.

Gahrie said...

@Smilin' Jack:

The McMartin stuff came from the same hysterical Left (mainly women) that we are currently getting the anti-vaccination, and anti-genetically modified crops crap from. Before them were the no corporal punishment (may Dr. Spock burn in hell), give them ritalin crowd.

You know, the LIVs who are going to elect Hillary.

Real American said...

It was just a Death Panel operating under Gandhicare.

n.n said...

The practice of rites is disruptive to human societies, unless they are first normalized as rights. Keep Odisha weird.

DanTheMan said...

>>McMartin preschool trial

I always thought the Satanist got a bad rap here. As I recall, there were lots of space aliens and circus clowns involved in these abuse cases as well.

Etienne said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
traditionalguy said...

Fear of witches spells is just silly. Everybody knows you hire a more powerfull witch to beat that witchcraft power.

Ergo: the problem is poverty. But you get the spell you pay for. All Zoroastrianism practitioners know that. The Catholics agree.

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

A faith-based solution.

readering said...

Sounds like there are still primitive tribes in India, as in other parts of the world, that live pretty much the way they have for thousands of years. But we're only a few centuries of development ahead of these people. They should catch up in what would be considered a blink of an eye from an evolutionary standpoint.

Rusty said...

How is this any different than someone murdering 8 people in a church and then the mob immediately going out and blaming a flag?

Gahrie said...

India is an interesting State. They have the nuclear bomb, and a viable space program. But they also have hundreds of millions of people living in abject poverty.

Their politics are beset with tribalism and religious strife. Corruption is the rule, and frankly expected by all.

They should have let the British stay at least fifty years longer.

Unknown said...

That family probably didn't believe in agw so....

cold pizza said...

And yet India has one of the largest, most intrusive governments on the planet with regulation out the wazoo. How can these things happen (with regular frequency) with such a well-governmentalized bureaucracy? Must be "bad luck." /sarc. -CP

lgv said...

"People believe in superstition because they do not have health care. "

If only they would introduce "Modicare", all this could be avoided.

Gahrie sums it up well. Part of it's huge disparity of life is a result of its previous caste system. While no longer legal, it takes many generations to overcome its effect.

jimbino said...

Most Anerikans who do have health care believe in talking snakes and donkeys, magic apples, wine turning into blood, crackers into flesh, water into wine, assumptions, unicorns, resurrections, ghosts and all kinds of like superstitions.

YoungHegelian said...

....and all kinds of like superstitions.

Like believing that objects outside of our minds can actually somehow impinge on our minds in ways that accurately reflect the real natures of those objects.

Gahrie said...

Jesus jimbino...give it a break. At least crack was entertaining some times....

Interesting,not crazy said...

So, did the illnesses stop, or not?

As a teen, saw an Indian rain dance one july. Sure as shit, rained in November, made a believer out of me.

Static Ping said...

Unicorns? Again? Seriously?

I think this quick video sums up my response nicely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AlCdvfhuAs

Bay Area Guy said...

Don't judge other cultures!

dbp said...

""People believe in superstition because they do not have health care. They are uneducated. Unless we provide them these basic facilities, the situation will not improve,""

Plenty of people who are well-educated and have access to health care believe in equally foolish superstitions: That GMOs and vaccines are dangerous, that organic food is somehow better, that cell phones cause brain cancer etc.

wildswan said...

There's people in American culture (who have access to Medicaid) who go about saying that they can levitate and fly about. It's a claim to be a sorcerer and it scares certain people - that's why it is done. Other people believe in voodoo. Others in the Illinois pension plan. Others in Common Core as an educational strategy. The group that refuses to reason is vast and varied.

cubanbob said...

jimbino said...
Most Anerikans who do have health care believe in talking snakes and donkeys, magic apples, wine turning into blood, crackers into flesh, water into wine, assumptions, unicorns, resurrections, ghosts and all kinds of like superstitions.
7/13/15, 4:31 PM

Why did you stop short of socialism? Now there is one of the most dangerous and pernicious myths of all times.

Freeman Hunt said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
The Godfather said...

I don't think it's right for us White Privileged People to criticize the cultures of non-White, non-Privileged People. Arent't their values as valid as ours?

Laslo Spatula said...

I find it amusing that everyone just assumes the accused were not practicing witchcraft and making the children sick.

Beware the Spell of Laslo.


I am Laslo.

n.n said...

The first rule of sacrificial rites, is that there is no "planning" outside of the clinic! Said one stork to another.

Think of the headlines: When good storks normalize wicked solutions.

The environment will be catastrophically unstable. It will make anthropogenic global warming feel like a slightly paddled bottom.

pm317 said...

People believe in superstition because they do not have health care.

It is amusing to see all you highly educated and rich people parse what she is saying through your own narrow worldview. What she is saying is that when people don't know the physical and medical reason for an ailment, they substitute it with what they know -- evil eye, superstition, and whatever else. Basic healthcare if it is available could explain and cure a lot of these situations in a way that these poor, uneducated people could understand. But of course, poverty and corruption reign. That is the unfortunate part. These people are at the bottom of the barrel.

Oh, all the jokes are not really funny.

sinz52 said...

This is what it took the West a thousand years to crawl up from.

In Europe in the Middle Ages, perhaps tens of thousands of women and girls were accused of witchcraft, tortured, and burned to death at the stake. Any time there was illness, bad weather, a bad harvest, ships lost at sea, they started blaming the supernatural.

What ended it wasn't better health care as this Indian spokesperson claims. What ended it was the rediscovery of a profound idea from the ancient Greeks:

Natural phenomena have natural causes, not supernatural causes.

And that's what science is all about.


Bryan C said...

Witchcraft making people sick? That's stupid superstitious nonsense. The real cause is GMO Food.

Or maybe Climate Change. Could be Gluten. Possibly some Chemtrails, too.

Achilles said...

pm317 said...
"People believe in superstition because they do not have health care.

It is amusing to see all you highly educated and rich people parse what she is saying through your own narrow worldview. ..."

Irony in pure form. +1 for being totally oblivious to it.

JCC said...

@ pm317 -

The humor of some of the posts aside - and you should grant some are pretty humorous (DS) - even had modern medical care been available, these villagers were not suddenly going to enter the 21st Century in terms of comprehension. To the degree they perceived some nexus between the new arcana (of vaccination and so on) and some improvement in health, they would simply attribute this to stronger magic. People in thrall to superstition are not suddenly going to become medical-science aware. They may see cause-and-effect, but only to the degree the next attack is against the new witch doctor in the white coat if something goes wrong. Conflating healthcare provision with some flash of of total assumption of civilization is frankly, pretty misplaced.

The humor is not directed against the villagers, BTW, but against the assumptions of the spokesperson, who blithely assures us healthcare will suddenly fix centuries of culture and belief. You know, just like it was supposed to work here...keep your own doctor, reduce the deficit, guarantee world peace, all that.

Roughcoat said...

Everybody, flog your personal agenda starting ... NOW!

Guildofcannonballs said...

This is a link describing how great NYC is because on November 28th, 2012, New Yorker's didn't kill or maim or even stab each other.

I got there via Maggie's Farm, and it was from a Buzzfead link.

They don't say the same shit now there were peddling in 2012 right after Romney sucked up the joint.

Then, they were saying "Despite a July spike in homicides, the city's murder rate is on target to hit its lowest point since 1960."

"Some experts are praising the New York police department's aggressive crime-prevention tactics, notably the so-called Stop And Frisk policy, which has rooted out dozens of illegal guns.
But critics argue that it has led to hundreds of thousands of young blacks and Latinos being stopped without cause."

I wonder what the numbers are now?

Certainly if crime has risen compared to 2012 in NYC we cannot correlate that with any policy changes.

If you have to ask why, I can't tell you.

William said...

You don't have to be superstitious to be wrong. Some superstitions probably give you an edge in survival. Some rationally held beliefs lead you right off the cliff. Mao is estimated to have killed seventy million Chinese in his efforts to rid the peasants of their backward beliefs.

Drago said...

William: "Mao is estimated to have killed seventy million Chinese in his efforts to rid the peasants of their backward beliefs."

Yes, of course. But as jimbino can explain to you: in a good way.

SteveR said...

Coexist

SteveR said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Guildofcannonballs said...

"on target" is a racist way to try and prevent homicides.

How about "on mutual feelings of interdependency-bound-aspirational-steerings-stratisfyers (IBASS) based on anti-religious (or un under certain limited circumstances) wisdom of Steel Panther and James Taylor?"

Guildofcannonballs said...

"Certainly if crime has risen compared to 2012 in NYC we cannot correlate that with any policy changes."

Holy shit I am a genius.

I knew it!

You "see" all the uses of the letter "c" up there in that sentence?

DO YOU SEE? I wanted you to "see" something so I wrote the letter "c" a bunch and you folks all lower-brainwise* don't cogitate what goes on.

My god, my genius...

I can't wait until I start getting paid for this, then I can really let loose!

*comparable to what was translated as Freud saying "subconscious" or some mixture of un and sub.

Guildofcannonballs said...

"But critics argue" against what they thought was going to be the lowest murder rate since 1960.

Those critics don't give a hoot in Hayden Fry's Iowa Hellstops about the murder or attempted decimations on select communities: only and always power matters.

So, they ought run Google, Twitter, Apple, Microsoft, Alibaba (nukes), Walmart, GM (redundant?), and, oh boy oh boy oh boy, the banksters.

Guildofcannonballs said...

I know math on a law blog is anathema, but this ain't just no law blog.

So 2012 - 1960 = 52 years.

Over a half-century since the rate of murder was going to be that low (they thought at the time; actually they could be correct I haven't gone over the numbers which is the point of my comments comparing India and New York and crime and our thoughts suchwise on thee) and the people who made it happen claimed why and were called racist.

The people who called them racist are now in power.

Americans have been blessed by God, and most know it (especially the chirpish distractors) and our collective conscious reflects it especially when not bastardized by Leftism.

kcom said...

When I lived in West Africa we had a "heart man" scare. Heart men were the people who would kidnap you and take your heart out for use in traditional "medicine". I still have a picture of the signs around town warning people. The world's a big place.

P.S. This is why I am suspicious of psychology. Or at least about the general applicability of its findings. Especially when the findings were a result of studying 50 upper middle class undergraduates.

Guildofcannonballs said...

Shucks...

I just remembered the greatest writing I have ever read.

It was on Althouse, of all places, and some comment where a guy said he left his light on in his bedroom when falling asleep because when he woke up he might for a second or two think his (widowed)wife was there, reading, and that's why the light was on. She was gone forever and never there but he wanted that second or two.

Romantic = danger.

Tenderness doesn't equal romantic (or Romantic language-wise) or other than tenderness.

Apathy and greed lead to gas chambers not tenderness.

Guildofcannonballs said...

http://don-colacho.blogspot.com/

Sorry friends: you lose.

Guildofcannonballs said...

"January 8, 2010
#1
Men change ideas less than ideas change disguise.
Through the course of the centuries the same voices are in dialogue.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 25
at 6:00 PM
Labels: ideas
1 comment:


StephenJanuary 8, 2011 at 6:18 PM
The original Spanish is:

Los hombres cambian menos de ideas que las ideas de disfraz.
En el decurso de los siglos las mismas voces dialogan."

RUN YOU FOOLS ! - Gandolph

Guildofcannonballs said...

"The original Spanish is:

El lector no encontrará aforismos en estas páginas.
Mis breves frases son los toques cromáticos de una composición “pointilliste.'"

http://don-colacho.blogspot.com/2010/01/2.html

Laslo Spatula said...

While my sitar gently weeps.

Laslo: within and without you.

I am Laslo.

Guildofcannonballs said...



sorry kcom I thought these droogs might respond best to things like this.

furious_a said...

SJW twitter mobs aren't any better than benighted Bengali villagers -- they want ro believe just as badly.

furious_a said...

jimbimo said...

...wine turning into blood, crackers into flesh, water into wine, assumptions, unicorns, resurrections...


Which explains all those Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian and Baptist hospital systems...unless it doesn't.

SJ said...

@sinz52

In Europe in the Middle Ages, perhaps tens of thousands of women and girls were accused of witchcraft, tortured, and burned to death at the stake. Any time there was illness, bad weather, a bad harvest, ships lost at sea, they started blaming the supernatural.

That's odd.

During the Middle Ages (roughly the years 500 to 1500) the Catholic Church taught that witches did not exist and were powerless. More than one king made accusation of witchcraft an offense for severe punishment, while ignoring the accusation of witchcraft.

During the Early Modern era (mid-1500s, through the 1600s and into the 1700s), in certain sections of Europe, a wave of witch-hysteria and execution happened. The only instance of this in North America happened in Salem in 1692.

Matt Sablan said...

If only McCarthy had had free healthcare.

Matt Sablan said...

We all remember that great scene in the Crucible when Abigail breaks down on the stand and says: "I only did this because I could not get birth control."

sinz52 said...

SJ said: "During the Middle Ages (roughly the years 500 to 1500) the Catholic Church taught that witches did not exist and were powerless."

The Malleus Maleficarum (commonly rendered into English as "Hammer of [the] Witches") is a treatise on the prosecution of witches, written in 1486 by Heinrich Kramer, a German Catholic clergyman.

In 1490, three years after its publication, the Catholic Church condemned the Malleus Maleficarum, although it was later used by royal courts during the Renaissance, and contributed to the increasingly brutal prosecution of witchcraft during the 16th and 17th centuries.

Until about 1400 it was rare for anyone to be accused of witchcraft, but heresies had become a major problem within the Church by the 13th century, and by the 15th century belief in witches was widely accepted in European society. Those convicted of witchcraft typically suffered penalties no more harsh than public penances such as a day in the stocks, but their persecution became more brutal following the publication of the Malleus Maleficarum, as witchcraft became increasingly accepted as a real and dangerous phenomenon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malleus_Maleficarum

Belief in witches was so strong that ordinary citizens defied the Catholic Church and burned accused witches at the stake anyway.

clint said...

I think this is just a translation error.

The Hindi word for "witch" should really be translated as Satanist child-abuser.

Notice that the key element of the accusation was making kids sick.

Rusty said...

Belief in witches was so strong that ordinary citizens defied the Catholic Church and burned accused witches at the stake anyway.

We hardly ever do that in America anymore.
Unless you're a conservative, or a T.E.A. party person. Then it's OK.