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Bullfighting: arguments against and action against Page 1 of 99 {} Bullfighting: arguments against and action against PAGE - HOME Introduction SITE: MAP PAGE - TRAVEL Introduction PH DESIGN Courageous men, courageous women, and animals La Route de Sang 1: against bullfighting in France, in French SITE: ABOUT La Route de Sang 2: against French bullfighting, in English 'Taking the offensive' EMAIL The horses: terror and trauma Horse disembowelling and bullfighting's 'Golden Age' The bull The courage of the bullfighters - illusions and distortions Bullfighting: the last serious thing in the modern world? Bulls, elephants and tigers B ullfighting as an art form. Bullfighting and tragedy Bullring ballet and bulls vomiting blood Bullfighting and comedy Bullfighting and 'duende ' B ullfighting and seduction San Francisco Opera, Susan McClary and Carmen Cultural stagnation Animals: appreciation and abuse Bullfighting and mono - culture Fadjen, a fighting bull, and Christophe Thomas Campaigning techniques Three Spanish restaurants La Route de Sang: nouvelle route touristique Human welfare and animal welfare Other forms of bullfighting Pamplona: a proposal Freedom of expression Bullfighting and tourists Some supporters and defenders of bullfighting Fiske - Harrison: The Baboon and Bull Killing Club Blood, Sang (French), Sangre (Spanish) Alexander Fiske - Harrison's blog: The Anti - blog Alexander Fiske - Harrison: the bullfighter - comic The bull shown above was killed in the Maestranza Bullring in Seville which features in the opera 'Carmen.' After being Antalya Nall - Cain: commentary on the writing of stabbed with the lance of the picador, stabbed six times Sarah Pozner, five star fiancée with the banderillas of the banderillero and stabbed with Stanley Conrad and the infant Jesus the sword of the matador, the bull was still alive: this Giles Coren: Pensées et Réflexions d'un Gourmet happens very, very often. The bull is now being stabbed in the spine with a dagger, the puntilla. Daniel Hannan: the 'tender relationship' of matador - bull' The Club Taurino of London: fighting talk A L Kennedy: including ALK on the killing of horses Blood, Sang (French), Sangre (Spanish) Orson Welles: who changed his mind The matador José Tomás drenched in blood, not his own Michael Portillo, speaker blood but the blood of the bull, during the ritualized cruelty See also of the bullfight: the bullfight as horror film: A L Kennedy's 'On Bullfighting' Women and bullfighting Seamus Heaney: ethical depth? Animal welfare and activism Ethics: theory and practice 'Taking the offensive' T here are now many organizations which recognize that bullfighting is being challenged as never before and which intend to defend it. One of them is 'Asotauro,' which gives this momentous declaration at the top of its home page www.asotauro.com : 'A los taurófilos nos ha llegado la hora de pasar a la ofensiva, no dejando ni una mentira sin contestar, ni una falacia sin rebatir.' The festival of Ashura, as celebrated here by Shia 'For lovers of bullfighting [literally, 'lovers of bulls'] the time has believers. In this case, the believers are drenched in their come to take the offensive, leaving no lie unanswered, no fallacy own blood. It can't be claimed that the feria, or bullfighting unrefuted.' festival, in 21st century Europe is far preferable to this festival of Ashura - it's the bullfighting festival which Aficionados refer to a bull which is unaggressive as a 'toro involves active cruelty. manso' or 'cowardly bull.' I sympathize completely with the 'toro manso' and its unwillingness to fling itself on the lance of the picador, the banderillas of the banderillero and the sword of the matador to provide aficionados with the experiences they think they're entitled to. But what of the aficionado manso, afraid - unable, it seems - to answer arguments? For these people I've no sympathy whatsoever, of course. From the section on this page on Tristan Garel - Jones: 'I've drawn the attention of many individual bullfighting supporters and bullfighting organizations to this material and received replies - the most common responses amount to 'I'll see what I can do,' - but silence has followed. Not one defence of bullfighting against these arguments. If these people and http://www.linkagenet.com/themes/bullfighting.htm 29/ 11/ 2019 Bullfighting: arguments against and action against Page 2 of 99 organizations consider that there are lies on this page, then go ahead and answer them, if they consider that there are fallacies on this page, then go ahead and refute them. Any bullfighting defender who does respond to the arguments on this page will Blood, Sang (French), Sangre (Spanish) have to follow much higher standards of critical reading and critical debate than Alexander Fiske - Harrison, who did claim to find a lie, a fallacy on this page. His claim that I'd referred to him as 'the acceptable face of Nazism' was nonsensical, and I explain why this is so in the section 'Into the Arena' which begins with comments on bad causes. By his own admission, he'd only read a little of what I'd written about him.' Asotauro's Website shows not the least sign of engaging with difficult anti - bullfighting arguments. Their declaration belongs to what I call the 'word - sphere,' whiich I describe as 'the world of ringing declarations, facile claims to importance, hollow confidence - building assertions, projections for future success.' The horses: terror and trauma More on 'La Route de Sang' below, in French. Lord Nelson, the victor at the Battle of Trafalgar, amongst other battles, was wounded several times in combat, losing the sight in one eye and most of one arm before being killed at Trafalgar. This is Lord Nelson, who was obviously very well acquainted with death and violence and was no sentimentalist (his harshness could be severe, and inexcusable), on the experience of attending a bullfight: 'We felt for the bulls and the horses ... How women can even sit out, much less applaud, such sights is astonishing. It even turned us sick, and we could hardly go through it: the dead, mangled horses with their entrails torn out, and the bulls covered with blood, were too much. We have seen one bull feast, and agree that nothing shall ever Petos ('protective mattresses') of picadors' horses. tempt us to see another.' Ernest Hemingway, 'Death in the Afternoon:' One of these women is the fictional Carmen, in Bizet's opera. Taking seriously the cruelties of the bullfight must '...the death of the horse tends to be comic while that of the bull lead to a revision of attitudes to Carmen the woman and to is tragic.' He relates the time when he saw a horse running in the Carmen the opera. bull - ring and dragging its entrails behind it, and makes the further remark 'I have seen these, call them disembowellings, that is the The peto - a protective mattress - was made a legal worst word, when, due to their timing, they were very funny.' requirement for the horses of the picadors in 1928. Before He was writing of the time when the horses of the picadors were the use of the peto - in the bullfight witnessed by Lord completely unprotected. A decree of the government of Primo de Nelson and his men and the bullfights which took place in Rivera in Spain ordered that picadors' horses should be given a the setting of Bizet's Carmen, 19th century Seville - the quilted covering 'to avoid those horrible sights which so disgust horses were unprotected. In each of these bullfights, far foreigners and tourists.' This took place in 1929. Note that it more horses than bulls were killed, sometimes as many as wasn't bullfighters or bullfight enthusiasts who called for this forty. Again and again, the horses died in horrific ways - protection. If they had, it would have been something in the after disembowelling, trailing their intestines behind them. balance to set against their depravity, but no. This is film of a bullfight which shows the horrific fate of Before that time, it was common - in fact, usual - for far more those horses - the gorings, the disembowellings, the horses than bulls to be killed in a bullfight - as I explain in The intestines hanging down, the dead horses lying in the ring - Golden Age of Bullfighting , as many as 40. D isembowelling is uncommon now, for the horses of the picador and the sights which didn't shock the fictional Carmen in the least, it rejoneador or mounted bullfighter. seems, judging by the love she has for a man who took part in these spectacles and inflicted such suffering. However, Hemingway was clear about one thing. 'These protectors avoid these sights and greatly decrease the number of A contemporary film showing similar scenes of horses killed in the bull ring, but they in no way decrease the pain suffered by the horses.' And, in the entry in the Glossary for disembowelling the pica, the spear with which the bull is stabbed by the picador, 'The frank admission of the necessity for killing horses to have a The opera 'Carmen' is based on the novella written by bullfight has been replaced by the hypocritical semblance of Prosper Mérimée and published in 1845. Prosper Mérimée protection which causes the horses much more suffering.' One of had already written 'Letters from Spain.' Extracts from 'First the reasons is that 'picadors, when a bull, disillusioned by the Letter: The Bullfights,' which show that his reaction to the mattress, has refused to charge it heavily more than once, have cruelties of the bullring was very different from the reaction made a custom of turning the