It’s not often that the Vatican and I agree on anything, but I was pleased to read that they have criticised – I might even go so far as to say “attacked” – the Dakar rally as “a bloody, irresponsible, violent and cynical attempt to impose questionable Western tastes on the developing world”.
It’s not the first time they’ve criticised it – the Wikipedia link above has a reference to a 1988 Vatican article which called the rally a “vulgar display of power and wealth in places where men [sic] continue to die from hunger and thirst”. (And from being run over by rally vehicles.)
Now they go further and say that an “undeniable component of violence … lies behind every attempt to export Western models to human environments and ecosystems that have little to do with the West”.
Motor racing in general has no appeal for me at all, but whenever I see news clips of rally vehicles ploughing through the Sahara, it does always look like a violent imposition of metal on sand, of noise on silence, of arrogance onto people unknown.
A year ago Australian motorbike rider Andy Caldecott was killed in the Dakar Rally. In the days immediately following his death two children were killed by rally vehicles. Their deaths didn’t make headlines.
I’m not quite sure what the Vatican is on about but I assume it is the fact that some lives have been lost. Suz just doesn’t seem to like motor sport or more specifically cars racing through a desert. I guess we could apply both critisisms to many other sporting (or otherwise) contests througout the world. Ocean yacht racing has claimed many lives, motor sport both track racing and rallying has claimed lives, cycling the same, what about sky diving, base jumping, rock climbing, and on and on it goes.
Do we stop them all or do we accept that people want to push themselves and compete in dangerous contests.
I find the thinking of the vatican and Suz just stupid.
The Vatican has opposed almost every step towards freedom and modernity that the Western world has ever taken. The only reason it opposed the police states of Eastern Europe was that those states were officially atheist.
It does not follow from the injustice of great inequality that the Dakar rally should be opposed. What follows is that the West should help the region to develop its independence and wealth, and not hog all the four-wheel drives to itself.
I’m sure the people of North Africa wouldn’t mind having, say, a hundred thousand cheap, hardy off-road vehicles being ‘imposed’ on them.
The article says the Vatican “called the wrecks of cars, trucks and motorcycles abandoned in the desert “rusty monuments to irresponsibility”".
Not valuable sources of parts and scrap metal?
BeeF, you miss the point entirely. It’s not about people putting themselves at risk in dangerous sports, it’s about western car corporations and western motor sportsmen carrying on a dangerous and disruptive race through third world countries.
The Dakar rally, like all of these events, puts a lot of money into the local economies of the countries through which it is run.
I have watched the series on the ABC “the road to Dakar” and the thing that struck me was how unforgiving the environment is on men and machines. And how sparsely populated as well But there are always people who look for the ultimate challenge and car and motorcycle builders who use such events to develop better cars and bikes for you and me.
The left is very fond of knocking motor sport but if it moves on wheels people will always want to race it. Would you for instance make the same objection to the cross-country solar-car races held in this country?
BeeF, David, and Iain – all of you seem to have missed the point that two young children were killed last year when the rally went through their village.
I am also very curious to know how you think these remote villages benefit in any way from having these cars drive through their land – it is not as though the drivers stop and purchase supplies or anything.
No they don’t. They do throw fistfuls of dollars out their windows, though. And you can’t blame the rally for the childrens’ deaths. It’s the lack of proper speed-humps, roundabouts, pedestrian traffic lights. In short, its third-world misgovernance to blame.
Afterall, no children have ever been run over at Silverstone or Monte Carlo.
How were the children killed? By having a flock of unexpected 4WDs surge through their village, or because they got too close while they were watching?
The deaths of the two children means that greater care should be taken by the organisers, and that the families should be fairly compensated. Even a manslaughter case might be justified.
But this article did not focus on the deaths of the children, it focused on the
and the
Which is an affirmation of the Vatican’s reactionary dislike, shared by many pseudo-leftists, for ‘vulgar’ modernity and ‘questionable’ Western taste.
Iain, this comment is silly-
Firstly, the article is about the Vatican criticising the race, and unless there’s been some major reformation I’m unaware of, the Vatican could hardly be described as ‘the left’.
Secondly, I know plenty of people on ‘the left’ who love motor sport. In fact, I own one of these
From the Dakar site, a list of humanitarian projects they have instigated/contributed to.
The Dakar rally is quite an interesting phenomenon.
As a pursuit in itself, it is quite a spectacle of human endurance.
But at the same time, I would imagine the lives of those who live in the various countries the rally passes through could be described as evidence of human ‘endurance’.
But I would be interested suz to know more of your thoughts specifically on the Vatican’s criticism that the rally is an “attempt to impose questionable Western tastes on the developing world.”
I can’t quite see the really as an attempt to impose ‘tastes’ on anyone. As far as I can tell, the rally competitors move through most of the countries only interacting with locals when they absolutely must (for emergency transport or supplies). The rally is in Africa because of its isolation and inhospitable terrain – even if that is exploitative, I don’t think the rally is seeking to change anything.
I’m probably just nit-picking, but it seems to me like the Vatican could have just noted that this is another example of how well we can waste our wealth and disregard others all in the name of ‘leisure’.
The cost of competing is pretty incredible, even for privateer entrants.
the poor sand…oh the humanity!
the human deaths are of course lamentable, especially those of bystanders and children.
the rally drivers themselves know and choose the risk, and their deaths are sad but many would claim they die doing what they love.
the negative impact of the rally on the desert is negligible and the positive impact from tourism and attention surely outweighs this.
another case of the left decrying what they dont like…
live and let drive…
Cristy, Suz: it’s clearly unacceptable that bystanders should be killed in such an event, particularly those who are there as part of their daily lives and not as willing spectators. The rally obviously needs to take much greater care to ensure that doesn’t happen. And clearly, if the rally is causing excessive environmental damage in a particular place the rally route shouldn’t go there.
However, does the Dakar rally make the villages it travels through any poorer?
What’s objectionable is the poverty of both those villages through which the rally passes, and the many times greater number through which it doesn’t, not the fact that the rally goes through it.
i ‘get’ motorsport. but it doesn’t mean i agree with it. especially not the spectacular-spectator neo-colonial form such as the Dakar, which i almost put on par with the bellicose dandies from top gear. on the other hand, terrorizing the embourgeoisment establishment with some spontaneous performances of territory…
anyway: trackback
comicstriphero, the questionable western tastes are derived from the motorsport form itself as a social event. This is imposed on the non-western desert populations. If you read my post then this will make more sense, but it is like a Balinese village staging a cockfight out the front of the QVB statue in Sydney.
I watched the TV program on the Dakar rally and was struck by a few things:
The blokes who entered the competition seemed to spend a lot of their time whinging about how hard and awful it was. Um, wasn’t that the point?
The desert out there is spectacularly beautiful, but none of the competitors would notice this because they couldn’t see it over the dust, and they spent most of their time gazing down at the track in order to avoid nasty big holes/rocks/other impediments.
Lack of interaction with local people at all. Isn’t at least part of the point of travelling to get an idea of what a place is really like, including the people? Clearly, those who participate in the rally have a radically different way of getting to know other places.
That I really don’t ‘get’ the appeal of loud noisy machines, nor why otherwise sane men spend so much money on them.
But as an act of cultural imperialism… I dunno about that. I wonder what the local people think about it? Has anyone asked them?
Motor racing in general has no appeal for me at all, but whenever I see news clips of rally vehicles ploughing through the Sahara, it does always look like a violent imposition of metal on sand, of noise on silence, of arrogance onto people unknown.
Motor racing has no appeal to me either, but now you describe it like that… I might just have to tune in!
But then again, the western romanticising of non-western societies doesn’t have much appeal to me either.
I wonder, do you suppose they have traffic lights at each sand dune so the cars can stop when Lawrence of Arabia passes?
TimT, I’ve visited some Saharan societies and believe me, I don’t romanticise them. Which doesn’t negate my criticism of the Dakar rally.
Suz
It sounds very much like you are one of these types who would not know what to do with herself if the world’s wretched and impoverished were ever tainted by the scourge of capitalism and able, you know, to feed themselves and buy an i-pod; let alone a car to zoom around in.
Given the choice of rapacious corporations or an alliance of the Vatican and “Suz” I know which your poor “third-worlders” would choose.
Indeed not, and I was being incredibly flippant. At the same time I wonder whether there weren’t some implicit prejudices behind your own criticism.
Where one westerner sees the beautiful, timeless sands of the Sahara desert, another might see a really ace place to drive a car. Which of them is the better person?
David J wrote:
Leading to more of this.
If the claims (in the article suz linked to) of environmental damage caused by four wheel drives in North Africa are true, then that means that the environmental impact of them should be addressed.
In any case, even if the environmental damage is true, that doesn’t address my point that the people of the region would snap up such vehicles if they could get them.
What alternatives would you offer to the developing world, which needs reliable transport to develop?
“an undeniable component of violence … lies behind every attempt to export Western models to human environments and ecosystems that have little to do with the West�.
Well, what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, I should think. An undeniable component of cultural violence as well lies behind every imbecilic attempt to import non-Western models to Western human environments that have very little to do with the non-West.
Couldn’t agree more with the post. End Multiculturalism Now.
Suz, how do you feel about, say, “ecotourism” to the Himalayas?
Robert, I feel ambivalent. I haven’t been to the Himalayas myself, though my partner has trekked there years ago. From what I’ve read, I’d be happy if Everest was closed to non-local climbers.
You channelling Mr Strocchi, JPZ?
I’ve heard Eco-Tourism described as travelling to Countrys with the purpose of watching how poor people live.
I think a little less of the “Oh this is just typical of the left” would be nice. As far as I’m aware, this is the first post about car racing on LP. Stick to the issues; if your objections are so obvious then they’ll be enough by themselves.
Somewhat more facinating, dont you think, than staying in the local Hilton, dining in the western 5 star restaurant and swimming in the 5 star pool, and ordering cheap massages?
A very real chance that the need to have a home theatre system may abate for a while.
We dragged our kids (8 & 10) around Thailand and Vietnam last Christmas staying in backpacker joints, homestays and the odd hotel when it got too much for them precisely for them to get some idea how the rest of the world lives, and comparibly how well off they are in the grand scheme of things. We’re off to Laos and China in a short while to visit some friends in Development work. Its blown the rennovation budget, but i think its money well spent.
“A bloody, irresponsible, violent and cynical attempt to impose questionable Western tastes on the developing world.â€?
Impose? Why yes, there are European helicopter gunships hovering above the race cars, just waiting to vaporise any pesky native who gets too close.
Well that’s one possibility, anyway. The other possibility is that the race organisers seek and obtain the permission of the government of each country the race passes through, no doubt paying hefty fees for the privilege. And then, if those governments are not totally corrupt, some of those fees might end up supporting health and education. Thus answering Cristy’s question about how the local villages benefit.
What’s so wrong about getting an idea about how other (poorer) people live anyway? Might give many people in the West a much-needed sense of perspective on their own lives.
There are arguments for and against tourism, of course, but generally I’m for it, provided it’s as non-exploitative as possible.
(Though one thing I absolutely hate is hearing about how Westerners go to poorer countries like Thailand/Cambodia and spend their whole trip haggling over a couple of cents price on a souvenir or whatever, because that’s ‘what you do’ when you’re in Thailand and don’t you know they inflate the prices when they see westerners coming? So what if they have one price for westerners and one price for locals? You think paying a dollar more for something matters? For chrissakes. We’re wealthy and privileged. Suck it up.)
I had a look at the literature on tourism and the developing world for a course I was teaching in 05.
The consensus of the academic research on tourism in the developing world suggests that around 80% of the tourist dollars spent fly straight back to the West – through the ownership of resorts, imports of facilities, food, etc. favoured by Western travellers, and so on.
A lot of countries looking to tourism as an economic panacea have been sorely disappointed.
It also creates large distortions in economic activity within the countries.
And then there’s the dark side of tourism – ie sex tourism which is by no means confined to places like Thailand or pedophiles.
Anyone who looks to tourism as an economic panacea would have to be deluded from the start. Tourism is just another form of economic activity. It can bring some benefits to the country that the tourist visits but a panacea it is not. However it’s no more a distortion of economic activity in a country than say opening up garment manufacturing factories in a country that previously did not have them is a distortion of economic activity.
Developing countries would not encourage tourism, as they do, unless they saw the overall benefit of it to themselves.
I’m not following your argument at all, GregM. Just because something happens doesn’t mean that people have made a free or an informed choice for it to happen. Or indeed that they’ve made the best choice.
There are lots of distortions – for instance the alienation of good agricultural land, concentration of investment on infrastructure to benefit tourists (and developers and corporations), tax dodges and concessions to encourage investment, lack of incentives to enter needed professions because of higher wages in tourism facilities, and more. And then there’s the broader question of whether you advance economic development through essentially setting up an economy which is centred around one or two products and services. It’s just not as simple as your apparent free market nostrums might suggest.
I know it was binge commenting but I’ve been moderated.
Can’t find any of your comments, anthony. Perhaps try again?
Mark, you have no evidence that the people who choose to participate as service providers in tourism, (from hotel operators to those who get jobs cleaning rooms) have not made a free and informed choice. However given the alternative for a lot of them, unemployment or back-breaking work in the rice paddies, it’s fairly safe to say that they make the best choices that are available to them. Developing countries, Mark, (and I am living in one) are not agrarian utopias where the happy little people go around singing jolly songs while collecting the harvest. They are, virtually by definition, desperately poor places where just about any form of economic activity is going to do more good than harm. (I make an exception here for child-sex tourism/UN peace-keepers and a lot of foreign aid/development activity).
As to the distortions you cite:
-the alienation of good agricultural land- If the land is being used for more productive purposes then that is not a distortion; that is an efficient allocation of resources.
-concentration of investment on infrastructure to benefit tourists (and developers and corporations)- The people who build these things pay for them, money that would not be spent, and employment that would not be created, except for that investment. Then there are the benefits that accrue to the locals such as new roads and airports being built and electricity and clean water being provided where it wasn’t before,
-tax dodges and concessions to encourage investment- Better that you do not provide these incentives and therefore have no investment and remain in dire poverty? That is the alternative.
-lack of incentives to enter needed professions because of higher wages in tourism facilities- What can I say to this one(he says, shaking his head at the naivity of the comment)? Where does the money come from for people to be trained so that they enter needed professions except from some-one else’s economic activity? Without that money then they won’t be entering the needed professions in the first place. Of course they could get the money from foreign aid but then guess who ends up as the car driver for the Western field representative- why its your local doctor who has been lured away from from his needed profession because the Western field representative wants a driver who speaks good English and offers more money than the doctor would earn practising medicine- (An actual case I know of).
Finland- Nokia?, Ireland- IT industry? India- again IT industry?
The answer to your broader question is that, yes, you can advance economic development in some situations by essentially setting up an economy which is centred around one or two products or services. (Unless of course your definition of economic development is the risible one promoted by the foreign aid industry with its sixty years of failure to achieve anything worthwhile for the countries in which it has operated).
However that is not my argument. I have already said that tourism is not a panacea. Even in Thailand where tourism is seen as significant it contributes only about 8% of GDP. Vietnam encourages tourism, but not at the expense of also making itself a low cost manufacturing centre to compete with China so that its people can be raised out of poverty.
then it’s gone forever…
It was completely brilliant though.
Dear il papa, butt out.
You’ll find some Caribbean countries have tried almost exclusively to survive/thrive on tourism, GregM.
I’m well aware of that, and I’m not arguing that there should be no Western tourism, just trying to counteract suggestions that it represents a panacea, and to get people to think about the fact that claims that all or most of the investment money/tourist spending boosts local economies because it stays there are simply false. As to the other issues, similar arguments about land utilisation could and are made in this country, and shouldn’t just be dismissed as rational market choices. There are rarely alternatives to particular investments in developing countries, as there are here, and a lot of dispossession and impoverishment occurs at the same time as some people do relatively better. It’s not a clear cut “good” or “bad” thing and I’m not suggesting it is all “bad”.
Same diff with investment for infrastructure etc. – you can similarly find beautiful new roads leading to mines in a lot of countries that offer dubious or incidental benefits to locals. And appallingly bad infrastructure in the rest of the country.
I’m thinking here of African countries mainly – Thailand and Vietnam are much more developed comparatively already.
It’s wrong to suggest that Ireland and Finland don’t have relatively well balanced economies which benefit additionally from IT and micro-electronics technology. And I suggest that you take a much closer look at the very uneven benefits that accrue to India through IT outsourcing.
And unjustified sneers about “foreign aid” aren’t an argument, and the fact that such aid has been misdirected in the past doesn’t refute the argument about distorted economies but reinforces it, if you think about it rather than just make flippant remarks.
Mark, I don’t know why you’re so vigorously beating the strawman that anyone thinks tourism is an “economic panacea”. Indeed, I don’t even understand the relevance of tourism to this thread — the Dakar rally is not something I would put in the normal category of tourism.
In any event, I object to particularly singling out tourism for attack. The comment about tourist dollars flying straight back to the West would apply equally to foreign investment of every sort. Whenever you invest in another country, you do actually want to repatriate the profits, or as much as possible, to compensate you for your investment. However, you still have to pay local taxes and payrolls. The 20% that stays behind may be very valuable to the local economy — I’m sure tourism is worth billions overall, and 20% of billions is not small change.
Yes, that’s true, Paulus, but I think there is a perception that tourism is in some way different.
Mark, my comments on foreign aid are sneers, but they are not unjustified. If you look at the foreign aid dollar you will find that with all the tie-backs to the donor countries most of the money (as much as the 80% you quote for tourism) ends up not being spent in the supposed recipient country but in the donor country. Further, a lot of the foreign aid dollar is dedicated to distorting economies by supporting economic models that are counter to economic growth. You quoted Africa. Well twenty years ago Vietnam was as poor as most of them. Then the Vietnamese took a deep breath and adopted rational economic policies including seeking foreign investment, even in their tourism industry. They have not looked back.
I don’t know enough about Finland, Mark, but Ireland was a dirt-poor agricultural country until, in the early eighties, it adopted a deliberate policy of attracting the IT industry which led to its economic take-off. However well-balanced its economy is today can be traced back to the decisions made then to adopt an IT strategy. The IT horse came before the well-balanced economy cart.
What is there for me to look at about the uneven benefits accruing to India through IT outsourcing? Of course the benefits will be uneven. That’s always the way economic development occurs. Are we all to wait around until every rice-farmer gets his PhD so that when, if ever, economic growth occurs, it will be evenly distributed?
There’s room for disagreement on all this, GregM, but doing so intelligently is not particularly fostered by the sort of sarcasm evident in your last question.
How evenly are the benefits of economic growth distributed in Vietnam? Serious question, I don’t know the answer.
Measured by the Gini Index, which measures the extent to which the distribution of income (or consumption) among individuals or households within a country deviates from a perfectly equal distribution, Vietnam’s distribution of the benefits of economic growth is remarkably good. To give some comparisons Vietnam 36.1, China 44, Thailand 51.1, Cambodia 40, Australia 35.2, New Zealand 36.2, US 45, UK 36.8, Ireland 35.9, Sweden 25, Japan 37.9, India 35.2. (All figures from the CIA Factbook and not all will be current).
Generally a Gini Index figure of between 24 and 40 is considered desirable as a low Gini figure, say 10 would indicate that the extremely even distribution indicates that not much economic activity is taking place, while above 40 indicates a disproportion of income to the rich.
One of the reasons for Vietnam’s relatively good Gini figure is, I think, that they liberalised farming, where the bulk of Vietnamese still work, in the 1980s so that farm productivity and incomes soared. At the same time they have pursued foreign investment fiercely in order to set up competitive low cost/ low skilled manufacturing which absorbs unemployed labour. Tourism is pretty undeveloped but has great potential as some parts of Vietnam are of breathtaking beauty. Just as long as they don’t muck it up with their love affair with concrete.
am i in moderation?
sorry, mark – i pressed ’submit’ 3 times – oops
No, jo, and I can’t find any comment from you in the spaminator.
A number of people have noticed comments just not going anywhere. The only advice til we can work out what’s causing it is to try again.
GregM, thanks for the information.
Gee, you obviously have done much better out of welfare work than I have, SG. We have no ‘renovation budget’ to draw from in order to trek through Asia. In fact, as I sit here in front of my 34cm TV, I’m wondering how we’re going to afford our next 6 day driving holiday to Brisbane, which is only 400km away
Mark,
FYI – technical info after i submitted – hope it helps you cure the bug.
On the left hand bottom of screen in the bottom bar of explorer – “Error on Page” message came up rather than Done or the URL etc. I right clicked it and a little message box appeared with this info:
Problems with this page may prevent it from being displayed properly or functioning properly.
Line 9
Character 3
Error: Unknown runtime error
Code: 0
URL: http://larvatusprodeo.net/2007/01/11/dakar-violence/#comment-304569
Dont know if this refers to the message box, or the entire page, or my explorer or,…..hope this is a clue…..
Thanks, jo. It means nothing to me but I’m sure it will be helpful to more technically minded LP bloggers
I had similar problems this morning…in Firefox I could hit ‘back’ and go back to the page where the comment box still had my text in it…it is a good idea to also copy your text into notepad or similar so you can cut and paste again.
This morning it was telling me the comment was being posted and then not displaying it…looked different to both mod box and spaminator.
Nah, its all just a very clever juggling act – our income is very humble.
We are presently in the process of exploring some house exchange programs in Europe for later in the year, and Asia is cheap if you eat what the locals eat.
Dont get the idea that we travel all the time. Until last year, we hadn’t travelled o/s since the kids were born, and we lived in new Guinea.
Btw, If you have an Aldi store in your town, they have a 68cm tv on special next week for around $250. Just mentionin’
I can always grab one for you if you like!
David, I keep a Word file open so that I can spell check (my typing being so bad). But you wouldn’t need to paste it anywhere, surely, just highlight and copy.
It’s much better viewing than the tennis, though!
What’s the Vatican’s view of contraception and abortion in areas of sub-saharan africa suffering population and STD issues again?
Is it in fact untrue that the African priests are among the worlds most hateful when it comes to gay rights on a continent with a long, long way to go in that area.
If you want to help africa pappa, don’t make motor racing the start and end of it.
Sorry Brian, I meant I paste a copy into Notepad, then cut (or copy) it from Notepad and paste it back into LP’s comment box if something goes wrong
This outburst about the “violent, bloody and irresponsible” Dakar Rally from the Vatican, is for me just the latest example of the shamefully out-of-touch hypocrisy, incompetency and academic selectiveness of the leadership of the Cathlolic church. These damning public declarations by the robed men living behind walls in intellectual and theological isolation and relative luxury — about such small “problems” as 4×4’s racing through vast North Africa — are both maddening and ultimitely dangerous. They are well-designed to make Western headlines, stir irrelevent and distracting debate, and deflect do-good public attention away from the real important issues Africa and the world faces…issues that the Vatican is either incapable of understanding, unwilling to address, or complicitly perpetuating as a result of its outmoded, hypocratic, wastefully corrupt and ineffective “humanitarian outreach”.
The Vatican does not have the best interests of Africa at heart, (or the best interests of any poor nation for that matter). It has proven this time and time again. Otherwise, it would have long ago embraced and publically promoted the concepts of contraception and safer sex, as the only real effective means of radically impacting the African AIDS problem, mass starvation (particularly among children), and the problem of orphaned, unwanted children. It has not, and it will not.
Were the Vatican to change it’s position on this, and put it’s vast resources behind its much-adored mouth, it would have arguably a much larger positive impact on these problems over the next 20 years than perhaps any other single initiative could. (Same goes for that great, benevolent, trillion-dollar-money-hole luxury bureaucracy we call the UN.) Instead, the Vatican (and UN) conveniently and cynically criticize all of those horrible, “cynical”, cold-hearted, “rich” Western nations for not giving billions more in “aid money”; a high percentage of which is known to go straight into the pockets of the corrupt local warlord/theocratic governments. These governments have a vested interest in insuring that their subjects remain poor, hungry, and therefore incapable of threatening their luxury and power. “Aid money” is one of the main problems that keeps Africa hungry and economically incable of helping itself, but, the Vatican also has a vested interest in the “aid money” process!
Similarly, the Vatican prefers to cynically criticize events like the Dakar Rally, which brings some degree of trade, economic boost, and international cooperation to the tiny isolated towns it travels through; however small that impact may be, it is surely a positive, and not just in tangible, measureable ways. When you see these local kids coming out in droves to excitedly cheer on the competitors, and interact with them in any way possible, (which they do), a rational person can immediately see the potential for any one of these kids to suddenly realize that the world is full of a larger potential, opportunity, possibility, than they were previously even capable of imagining. If even one of these kids further develops that dream/curiosity as a result, and does something to bring more awareness, growth, trade, WHATEVER, to his community in the future, then the Dakar rally is well worth it on that basis alone.
Deaths on the Dakar Rally: How many kids die around the developed world, or even within 1000 kms of the Vatican, from being hit by a bus, car, motocycle, truck, train, or for that matter having a TV or computer monitor fall on them. I’ll assure you it is a far larger number. Does the Vatican suggest we ban all autos and TV’s, or decree them an irresponsible, bloody and cynical evil? No, because it’d be seen as utter nonsense. That’s not nearly as easy a target as condemning a European motor race running through Africa, one which will surely then be seen, pathetically, as exloiting the locals in every horrible way possible. And on a much more important point: How many kids die each day in Africa as a result of tribal or religious genocidal warfare against civilian populations? What has the Vatican really done about this other than offer hollow lip-service condemnation of the violence? What is their role in it? What should it be? This is just more intellectual selectiveness and arrogance, and even a moment spent damning the downsides of a car race, ANY car race anywhere, are to me nothing short of moral, if not even criminal, neglect.
Environmental impact: I cannot comprehend how people can criticize the infintessimally tiny environmental impact of 4×4 cars racing through the vast dunes of North Africa, largely on SAND, when there are far larger atrocities happening as we speak. Realistically, tomorrow’s windstorm covers every single one of today’s car tracks, to the extent that they were never even there to begin with. And, by contrast, one single luxury jet flight by some eggheaded overpaid “expert”,to go inspect said environmental “impact” and alert the media, itself has a far larger actual environmental impact. But I don’t hear anyone debating that sort of thing…it does not appear in the headlines so it does not get though about.
The making of the computers we are all on had a far bigger impact too. What if the Vatican suggested that you stop using yours, for that reason? Ridiculous. All of it.
Politics of “Saving Africa”: If this race were in China, say through the Gobe desert, the Vatican would not have bothered commenting one way or the other, no matter how many kids died, no matter what the enviro impact. The Vatican is scared to death of China’s “secular” government for obvious reasons, but more importantly, even the Vatican realizes how utterly pointless it would look to make such a criticism, when it is already well demonstrated that the massive-scale human rights and environmental abuses of that nation go virtually ignored by the world’s mass media and the good people who consume it and trust it. No, China doesn’t tug on the heart strings of our emotional Western populations like Africa does, even though China is already an environmental and human-rights catastrophy on an unimaginable scale. But it’s simply too big of a problem to understand for most, and therefore it is effectively a problem that conveniently does not exist. Africa, and a dinky little rally race through it, is an easier discussion, easier target, even though totally irrational in the larger sense. Meanwhile, the real issues in Africa and around the world, and their root causes, roll on, partially obscured by the wasted guilt-money we throw at them.
Good people of the world, get your priorities straight. Stop wasting time debating easily seen and understood mosquito bites on the surface, while applying mere band-aids to the gushing hemorages, deep internal cancers and vital organ failures of the world body. The time you waste costs millions of lives, even as we pat ourselves on the back for our divine “altrusism”, misapplied as it may be.
The Vatican is not a worthy or qualified judge to condemn a Rally in Africa. When they lift a finger to really do something about their own hypocritical internal horrors, like say the systemic and entrenched pattern of child abuse by priests around the world — to which they knowingly turn a blind insular eye — I’ll give them a rat’s arse for what they think of a car race in a desert.
Wow, excellent Sunday morning reading. This is (with one or two easily identifiable exceptions) one of the most interesting, informative and civilly conducted threads I’ve seen here or anywhere else for ages. Thanks for the post, Suz.
My two cents is to identify what I think are the two most telling points so far:
Glen’s phrase ’spectacular-spectator neo-colonial form’: bang-on. Clearly there are fors and againsts on the economic and environmental fronts, but what was bothering me most was the attitudes and assumptions behind the events, rather than the events themselves.
And Armagnac’s advice to the Pope: ‘What’s the Vatican’s view of contraception and abortion in areas of sub-saharan africa suffering population and STD issues again? … If you want to help africa pappa, don’t make motor racing the start and end of it.’