THE GLOBAL AND THE LOCAL

http://tchadonline.com/video-photosl’occident-hypocrite-face-aux-sacrifices-danimaux/ VIDEO & PHOTOSL’Occident « hypocrite » face aux sacrifices d’animaux TOL : 05:35 LES OBSERVATEURS 27/11/2009 / NÉPAL Tous les cinq ans, près d’un million d’Hindous participent à un festival, dans l’ouest du Népal, où l’on sacrifie buffles, chèvres, coqs et pigeons par milliers. Les défenseurs des droits des animaux, dont l’actrice française Brigitte Bardot, ont tenté d’y mettre fin. Mais pour l’une de nos observatrices népalaises, ce rite hindou n’est pas si différent de ce qui se passe, quotidiennement, dans les abattoirs modernes. Le festival a eu lieu cette année les 24 et 25 novembre. Il attire des Hindous du Népal, mais aussi d’Inde, où les sacrifices animaliers sont interdits. Les prêtres affirment que les 150 000 bêtes abattues dans le cadre des festivités sont autant d’offrandes à Gadhimai, déesse du pouvoir. Ce festival constituerait la plus grande cérémonie de sacrifices d’animaux a...

Sushma Joshi Kathmandu Post NOV 28 - In a gathering at my Kathmandu house where we incidentally sat around and ate buffalo momo dumplings, I said, “I wonder what psychological trauma the people around Gadhimai feel through all the pain of the sacrificed animals!” My logic, that somehow the violence inflicted on the animals must reflect on the humans, and that somehow this would lead to more violence, was smartly counteracted by a learned friend (he asked me not to use his name but identify him, tongue-in-cheek, as “learned friend”) who said, “But think about their beliefs. This is a deeply engrained tradition of animal sacrifice that goes back hundreds of years. They believe that the sacrifice brings them good luck, and you can’t beat that.” The talk then moved to gruesome descriptions of animal sacrifice in Aacham where men make 500 cuts on an animal before slaughtering it, and another event in which people get the bulls drunk before leading them to a blood-soaked death fight in Bhakt...

Every five years, Hindus travel for miles to participate in Nepal's mass sacrifice of tens of thousands of buffaloes, goats, roosters and pigeons. Animal rights activists, including French actress  Brigitte Bardot , have attempted to put an end to the tradition. But as one of our Observers there points out, the five-yearly mass slaughter is no worse than the daily dealings of a modern abattoir. Held on November 24 -25, this year's festival in southern Nepal attracted up to a million Hindus, many from neighbouring India where the practice is banned. Priests say that over 150,000 animals were offered to the goddess of power, Gadhimai. It is thought to be the world's biggest animal sacrifice. WARNING: you may find these images upsetting. Video by Flick users  Sylvia Vizcaino and Paul Meyer .  “Gadimai brings to light what happens every single day in cattle farms across the planet” Sushma Joshi Sushma Joshi is a writer and filmmaker...

SUSHMA JOSHI Kathmandu Post November 19: When I was in college, our American campus was abuzz with students talking about “deccentering” power. This decentering happened to all sorts of power centers, from white men to Europe to English Literature. White men, who as everybody knows are the center of the world, were a particular target: bright undergraduates would try to pull apart their Eurocentric patriarchal hegemony all the time with glee. Other times, they decentered language, or decentered meaning, or decentered other Grand Narratives of this nature. My primary emotion about all this decentering was that it was a thrilling process initially, but then as the years wore on and people went on deconstructing these structures but not providing an alternative, things started to feel a bit destabilized. I started, in other words, to feel like I had lost my moorings. If everything from the slippery meaning of words to the shape of thought was up for grabs, then what exactly could I believ...