Seems almost laughable. Until you consider the fact that they probably don't believe in Global Warming.
A woman in rural Papua New Guinea was bound and gagged, tied to a log and set ablaze on a pile of tires this week, possibly because villagers suspected her of being a witch, police said Thursday. Her death adds to a growing list of men and women who have been accused of sorcery and then tortured or killed in the South Pacific island nation, where traditional beliefs hold sway in many regions.
The victims are often scapegoats for someone else's unexplained death -- and bands of tribesmen collude to mete out justice to them for their supposed magical powers, police said. Sounds like a primitive culture's version of layoffs.
"We have had quite difficulties in a number of previous incidents convincing people to come forward with information," said Simon Kauba, assistant commissioner of police and commander of the Highlands region, where the killing occurred. "We are trying to persuade them to help. Somebody lost their mother or daughter or sister Tuesday morning."
Early Tuesday morning, a group of people dragged the woman, believed to be in her late teens to early 20s, to a dumping ground outside the city of Mount Hagen. They stripped her naked, bound her hands and legs, stuffed a cloth in her mouth, tied her to a log and set her on fire, Mauba said.
"When the people living nearby went to the dump site to investigate what caused the fire, they found a human being burning in the flames," he said. "It was ugly." The fact that they were roasting marshmallows didn't help appearances, either.
The country's Post-Courier newspaper reported Thursday that more than 50 people were killed in two Highlands provinces last year for allegedly practicing sorcery.
In a well-publicized case last year, a pregnant woman gave birth to a baby girl while struggling to free herself from a tree. Villagers had dragged the woman from her house and hung her from the tree, accusing her of sorcery after her neighbor suddenly died. She and the baby survived, according to media reports.
Killings of witches, or sangumas, is not a new phenomenon in rural areas of the country. Yeesh. Don't use a cigarette lighter where they can see you.
Emory University anthropology Professor Bruce Knauft, who lived in a village in the western province of Papua New Guinea in the early 1980s, traced family histories for 42 years and found that 1 in 3 adult deaths were homicides -- "the bulk of these being collective killings of suspected sorcerers," he wrote in his book, From Primitive to Postcolonial in Melanesia and Anthropology. And whatever you do, do NOT show them your Blackberry.
In recent years, as AIDS has taken a toll in the nation of 6.7 million people, villagers have blamed suspected witches -- and not the virus -- for the deaths.
According to the United Nations, Papua New Guinea accounts for 90 percent of the Pacific region's HIV cases and is one of four Asia-Pacific countries with an epidemic.
"We've had a number of cases where people were killed because they were accused of spreading HIV or AIDS," Mauba said. Send 'em off to Korea. I hear Kim Jong Il came up with a cure for that a few years back.
While there is plenty of speculation why Tuesday's victim was killed, police said they are focused more on who committed the crime. Maybe it would be more productive at this point to just start handing out flyers about what causes AIDS. Fewer people dead at the end of the day is usually the best way to go. Besides, when the tribesmen figure out what really happened, they'll probably kill the accuser themselves.
"If it is phobias about alleged HIV/AIDS or claims of a sexual affair, we must urge the police and judiciary to throw the book at the offenders," the Post-Courier wrote in an editorial. Fine. As long as the book looks like an anvil, it ought to work.
"There are remedies far, far better than to torture and immolate a young woman before she can be judged by a lawful system." Tell that to the tribesmen.
#1
Jeez! Gorb. Your humor is a little rough for my tender eyes. This is a pretty graphic description of a brutal murder of a real person. It's time for the government to round up the usual suspects and find who brought the marshmellows. Now, I'm doing it, too! Stop it! Stop it!
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
01/08/2009 7:45 Comments ||
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#2
Don't you dare try to civilize them.
You'll have every leftist human rights organization in the world land on the back of your neck.
For every company that ever dreamed of being able to talk directly to its customers, Toyota (TM) has found an answer.
It announced Wednesday that new Lexus vehicles will start being delivered later this year with a system that includes capability for voice messages sent directly from the automaker to its drivers.
Called Lexus Insider, the service will let Lexus send audio messages to participating owners on whatever subject it chooses, from tips on making the best use of the vehicles' features to suggestions for a scenic drive.
Toyota officials promise to be discerning and restrained.
"We're not going to barrage customers with marketing messages," vows Jon Bucci, vice president of Toyota's U.S. advanced technology unit.
An Egyptian court dismissed Monday a divorce lawsuit filed by a Coptic wife against her husband, who recently converted to Islam.
In the first ruling of its kind, the Cairo Personal Status Court refused to grant Laila Hanna a divorce from her husband based on the principle of "no harm, no foul," a judiciary source told AlArabiya.net.
"The fact that the Christian husband converted to Islam does not invalidate the marriage contract since Islam allows the marriage of Muslim men to Christian women," he said.
Let's try it the other way and see how the court rules ...
This is applicable as long as no harm was inflicted on the wife as a result of the conversion. Hanna's lawsuit, filed almost a year ago, did not mention any afflictions. On the contrary, Hanna said her husband treats her well.
The reason she cited for seeking a divorce was that the marriage contract was ecclesiastic and was signed by members of the Christian clergy. She said this was enough to annul the contract since marrying a Muslim requires two Muslim witnesses.
"The court goes by the purpose of the contract back when the husband was Christian," the verdict said. "The fact that the husband converted does not invalidate this."
Posted by: Fred ||
01/08/2009 00:00 ||
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A wooden boat with nearly 200 people on board was found drifting off the northern tip of Indonesias Sumatra island Wednesday, officials said. The boat, with 19 people from Bangladesh and 174 from Myanmar on board, was found at sea by fishermen off Sabang island in Aceh province, local navy commander Yanuar Handwiyono said.
Those on board the boat were weak after being adrift for around one week, Handwiyono said. Some 79 passengers are being treated in two separate hospitals in Sabang town for dehydration, he said.
All of those on the boat were men and none of them spoke Indonesian or English.
The passengers were believed to be en route to Malaysia to seek a better life, Aceh police spokesman Farid Ahmad said. The police had referred the boat passengers case to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees and local immigration authorities, he said.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/08/2009 00:00 ||
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Dozens of residents claimed to have seen bright flashing spheres is the skies near Louth, Lincolnshire, where a 290ft turbine was mangled in a mystery collision.
One woman said she saw the an object fly towards the wind farm, while others described the lights as being linked by "tentacles", leading locals to dub it the octopus UFO.
Dorothy Willows, who lives a mile and a half from the crash site, said: "The lights were moving across the sky towards the wind farm. Then I saw a low flying object. It was skimming across the sky towards the turbines."
Later on Sunday night, one of a turbine's 65ft blades was ripped off and another severely damaged.
The Health and Safety Executive described the damage as a "unique incident", and the energy firm Ecotricity which owns the 20-turbine site say it has no explanation.
"We are struggling to find an answer, yes, and it has been quite interesting to read the reports in the press about what people have seen," Dale Vince from the company told BBC Radio Four's Today programme..
"It sounds unbelievable but actually we don't have any explanation at the moment. Give us a few days and if there is a rational explanation we will find it."
Robert Palmer, chairman of East Lindsey District Council, was among the dozens of people who reported seeing strange lights in the sky in the evening before the incident. Another witness, John Harrison, described looking at the farm out of his window and seeing "a massive ball of light with tentacles going right down to the ground".
UFO enthusiasts have described the incident as potentially one of the most significant encounters in years, and have called for the damaged parts to be tested to uncover the cause of the collision. A more down-to-earth theory is that the turbine was damaged due to the build up of ice on the blades.
The Ministry of Defence said that it did not investigae UFO sightings unless there was evidence of a potential threat to the UK.
#5
Too bad nobody got video of the actual destruction in progress.
We could have all enjoyed watched it on Discovery's "Destroyed in Seconds." :-D
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
01/08/2009 17:07 Comments ||
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#6
Sounds like someboy at DARPA, Area 51, or Wright-Patterson is going to be getting a bunch of Police-Court tickets + Atorney-certifed legal bills.
Lessirree > e.g. [State-OWG] DWL, ILLEGAL PARKING, ILLEGAL PACING/TOWING, CAUSING AN ACCIDENT, INSURANCE, + LEAVING THE SCENE OF AN ACCIDENT, for starters. YOU JUST KNOW MOM, DAD, COLONY + SPACE UNIVERSITY ADMIN. AREN'T GONNA LIKE IT ONE BIT.
#7
gromky, the national languages of Belgium are French and Flemish. Flemish is a dialect of Dutch, which the Netherlanders mock unmercifully -- whether fair or not, the Flems are viewed as ignorant peasants.
#2
I don't know, betting against symmetry is counter intuitive to anyone with a physics background, even an undergraduate one. Our universe always seems to prove itself to be a wonderfully symmetric system.
#5
I always go with "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof".
This sounds like another case of publishing before there is evidence. Have your theory, make your predictions, do your experiments.....have others replicate your work.....then we'll talk.
#6
There once was a racer named Fisk
Who took a considerable risk
When his dragster got traction
Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction
Reduced his wazoo to a disc
Countercolumn News Ticker: Pr0n industry seeks Federal Bailout
(CNT)Stung by limp sales and sagging profits, the American pr0nography industry has fallen on hard times, and is seeking a $5 billion injection from Uncle Sam, according to CNN. Experts say that unless the Treasury moves quickly, the entire U.S. adult entertainment industry could go down quicker than a crack whore on a quota, say anal-ysts.
Jason's double entendres needed a wider audience. And I needed a good chuckle.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
A wooden boat with nearly 200 people on board was found drifting off the northern tip of Indonesias Sumatra island Wednesday, officials said. The boat, with 19 people from Bangladesh and 174 from Myanmar on board, was found at sea by fishermen off Sabang island in Aceh province, local navy commander Yanuar Handwiyono said.
