Tags
Black on Black crime, Cecil the Lion, double standards, Human Rights violations, PETA, Planned Parenthood, South Africa, USA, white genocide, Zimbabwe
I had promised myself that while I may leave comments under other blog posts that I would not do a post on Cecil the Lion, that is until I came across the following article.
First the article, then my opinion.
So sorry about Cecil.
Did Cecil live near your place in Zimbabwe?
Cecil who? I wondered. When I turned on the news and discovered that the messages were about a lion killed by an American dentist, the village boy inside me instinctively cheered: One lion fewer to menace families like mine.
My excitement was doused when I realized that the lion killer was being painted as the villain. I faced the starkest cultural contradiction I’d experienced during my five years studying in the United States….
In my village in Zimbabwe, surrounded by wildlife conservation areas, no lion has ever been beloved, or granted an affectionate nickname. They are objects of terror.
When I was 9 years old, a solitary lion prowled villages near my home. After it killed a few chickens, some goats and finally a cow, we were warned to walk to school in groups and stop playing outside. My sisters no longer went alone to the river to collect water or wash dishes; my mother waited for my father and older brothers, armed with machetes, axes and spears, to escort her into the bush to collect firewood.
A week later, my mother gathered me with nine of my siblings to explain that her uncle had been attacked but escaped with nothing more than an injured leg. The lion sucked the life out of the village…
Outstanding op-ed by
which I urge you to reading in its entirety. However, As you might have guessed, Nzou was pilloried for the op-ed by those appalled with the death of poor, poor Cecil.Below are two favorable comments (and trust me, it was hard to find), that I thought worth sharing from two individuals bold and honest enough to take on the mindset of the usual intolerant blowhards that we hear from everyday ripping Nzou and his article to shreds.
witzcam, South Bend IN
Wow, nothing reveals the ethnocentric mindset like the commenters that rip the author. This article was spot-on, and I say this as a former Peace Corps volunteer who has an understanding of life in Africa, and American’s misanthropic affection for pets over people. Sure, I despise the dentist for his egoistic trophy-hunting and wish Cecil were alive, but the point of the article is our over-the-top reactions to the death of a lion….
MarkG, NYC
The comments about the narcissism of killing an animal just to have done it are easy to agree with and it’s understandable that people are offended by that aspect. But what arrogance to suggest, as several have, that the author is lying, is “too articulate to be a scientist” so must be someone’s mouthpiece, or — which is the point of his piece — to value the lives of animals over Africans. But that is, after all, the American way. Isn’t it? Callous disregard masked as a higher ideal. In the words of former Senator Moynihan, we’re entitled to our own opinions but not our own facts. Lions are NOT, contrary to what has been asserted, endangered. Sure, if thousands were killed, they would be. But that’s not the case and would similarly be the case with many animals. As a white, college educated, suburban raised professional who has worked in Africa, where is the outrage over poverty, disease, corruption — the things that effect the people? People out here are fist-bumping the Zimbabwean government’s call for extradition. A government near the top of Human RIghts Watch’s list of offenders. A government that displaces hundreds of thousands. That denies schooling to hundreds of thousands. That jails gays and lesbians. That expropriates property. That jails political dissidents. I’m offended too by the killing of this lion because of it’s pointlessness. But get a grip….
AND NOW FROM THE PERCH IN MY WINDOW:
Timing is everything, I ran across the article at a moment when I am most disgusted at the audacity and naiveté of those outraged by the death of a lion but cannot be bothered to acknowledge that
(a) Cecil the lion if given the opportunity would have gladly made a meal out of the hunter who killed Cecil or any member of PETA protesting the killing if given the opportunity;
(b) cannot concern themselves with the Black crime/homicide rate that is surging across the United States; the epidemic of Black on White crime not just in the United States but White genocide in South Africa; and
(c) oh yes, the massacre, harvesting and sale of America’s most precious commodity, our children.
Mentioned above is just the tip of the iceberg.
Cretins such as PETA, Planned Parenthood and other animal rights and abortion advocates ignore the fact that the massacre of innocent babies occurring in America (correction across the globe, Planned Parenthood is international) in biblical proportions is the biggest human rights atrocity of our time (not discounting the endless of human atrocities taking place today, also of which these same people cannot concern themselves).
Yet with everything going on in the world today, they cry for a lion and demand that a human’s head be impaled on a pike for doing what man has done since the beginning of time. [Disclosure: My grandfather, uncles and great-uncles were hunters. I have had bosses who hunted and while I myself have never hunted, I do not begrudge hunting. How do you think people survived during the depression, etc? Some people hunt for sport, others survival but those are my views.]
Just sign me,
SICK TO MY STOMACH OF IT ALL.
LINKS:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/05/opinion/in-zimbabwe-we-dont-cry-for-lions.html
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/06/09/black_america_rages_as_murder_rate_soars_126911.html
http://conservative-headlines.com/2015/06/13-new-black-on-white-murders/
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/398136/end-south-africa-josh-gelernter