From last month...

Cannibal soldiers "selling human flesh" (Ananova)

. . . . Many army, rebel and tribal fighters believe Pygmies are sub-human and some think that eating them will give the gunmen magic powers.

"In living memory, we have seen cruelty, massacres, genocide, but we have never seen human beings hunted and eaten literally as though they were game animals, as has recently happened," said Sinafasi Makelo, a representative of the Mbuti Pygmies in Congo.

"Pygmies are being pursued in the forests ... people have been eaten," said Makelo, a delegate to the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues which is meeting at UN headquarters in New York . . . .


  That is ... the quote of the year: Pygmies are being pursued in the forests ... people have been eaten.

    I mean, I read the line with unusual calm: Pygmies are being pursued in the forests ... people have been eaten.

  It actually makes me laugh in this bizarre post-Adams kind of way. I ... I don't know what to think. First the myth that having sex with a virgin cures AIDS ... now this?! Magic powers?

  If anybody is left alive in the area after this conflict, we need to send an army of sociologists and anthropologists. This is ... amazing.

  Magic powers?

  The world has to ask itself some serious questions: The situation is intolerable; I would prefer to see the whole place nuked rather than let this go on unabated. Set a date, tell the people to get the hell out, and then just burn it all to dust.

  Now, let me just get this straight:

- Child soldiers on drugs
- At least 3 nations (DRC, Uganda, Rwanda) involved
- 60,000 dead in Bunia in 4 years directly resulting from conflict; millions dead from the larger conflict
- Widespread rape and pillage
- They're eating Pygmies!

  I think I've gone and lost my mind. My increasing awareness has resulted in an increasing sense of horror. I think I've just crossed into a Numb Zone.

  "They're eating Pygmies." The phrase is so absurd that I don't know what to think. I look at the words on the screen and I titter. There's not enough drugs in the world to get me high enough to ever imagine that I would one day read that soldiers were eating Pygmies in order to obtain magic powers.

  This is like Elvira meets H.R. Puffinstuff meets the godforsaken Devil itself.

  I will wake up later today, and the whole world is going to look different.

  I'll be in the corner, for the time being, smoking a phattie...http://images.andale.com/f2/116/115/6042312/1047199367399_leaf.gif

Considering the state that the world is in today, this doesn't suprise me...

Horrible as this sounds, with the abject starvation the people in that area face, it could well be true.