Seeking supernatural powers through rape.

[TsarBomba]

Sometimes you come across a story of supernatural/superstitious belief that is so disgusting, so vile, that little more has to be said. This is one of those cases. (http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,25455058-23109,00.html)

From the original story:

GOVERNMENT troops sodomised pygmies in March in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, believing they would gain supernatural powers, a regional rights group said.

"Some soldiers from the 85th Brigade sodomised three male pygmies to gain supernatural powers and protection in Kisa village in Walikale territory,'' the Human Rights League of the Great Lakes said.

[foxholeatheist]

Why is Africa becoming the Mecca for unimaginable inhumanity?

[jasonpatterson]

This sort of craziness has probably been going on for a great long while, but news of it doesn't get out. Even today the global media haven't made great inroads in reporting in Africa.

[shadron]

*sigh*. Someone should take them out in the bush and show them the extent of their new powers.

[rjh01]

Any excuse to do what they want to do. They want to rape animals and they need an excuse to do so. So they say they get supernatural powers. Others hear about this and follow suit. Then it gets to be common knowledge.

[Mojo]

Sometimes you come across a story of supernatural/superstitious belief that is so disgusting, so vile, that little more has to be said. This is one of those cases. (http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,25455058-23109,00.html)


If you think that is vile:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/correspondent/2311067.stm

[Georg]

Any excuse to do what they want to do. They want to rape animals and they need an excuse to do so. So they say they get supernatural powers. Others hear about this and follow suit. Then it gets to be common knowledge.

Huh?

[Professor Yaffle]

Any excuse to do what they want to do. They want to rape animals and they need an excuse to do so. So they say they get supernatural powers. Others hear about this and follow suit. Then it gets to be common knowledge.

I know humans are indeed animals, but its not the word I would have chosen in this instance.

[rjh01]

So sorry. Did not click on what pygmies were. Why could they not just say people?

[Monketey Ghost]

Urotsukidoji

[jasonpatterson]

So sorry. Did not click on what pygmies were. Why could they not just say people?

Because they are a particular group of people, very small, technologically primitive bushmen. That kind of helps provide the 'rationale' for the act. They are unusual, so they must have some special powers, basically.

[fuelair]

Sometimes you come across a story of supernatural/superstitious belief that is so disgusting, so vile, that little more has to be said. This is one of those cases. (http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,25455058-23109,00.html)Though I do not wish it on the victims, I hope somehow the"soldiers" who did it get AIDS.

[fuelair]

Urotsukidoji
Quite.

[fuelair]

For the unaware but curious: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108461/

[Monketey Ghost]

Seriously. Went to see a showing in Ann Arbor many years ago of Urotsukidoji, completely unaware of what it was, besides animation.

Appalling. The creators of such entertainment have messed up minds.

[fuelair]

Seriously. Went to see a showing in Ann Arbor many years ago of Urotsukidoji, completely unaware of what it was, besides animation.

Appalling. The creators of such entertainment have messed up minds.
Remember that Octopi and related are very much of Japanese culture as a strongly ocean related country. Tentacle-human relations are not unique to anime there. And are not modern.

[geni]

Why is Africa becoming the Mecca for unimaginable inhumanity?

DRC not africa.

Basicaly because when europe was nabbing bits of africa the DRC was given to King Leopold II of Belgium (not belgium literaly king leopold). He then spent a few decades makeing the natives lives miserable (haveing people's hands cut of and the like) while trying to increase rubber production at the like.

Belgium took over running the place in 1908 and things got better but still pretty poor even by colonial european standards.

Got independence in the 1960s. The first civil war started shortly aftwards. The country's leader 1961 was killed in 1961 and this was followed by 4 years of ah instability. In 1965 CIA backed Joseph Mobutu (he was anti communist see and it was thought he would allow the west acess to the DRC's mineral weath) take control. Mobutu was your fairly standard african thug dictator.

Anyway elsewhere the cold war ended and the CIA stopped funding Mobutu. Result is that when the Rwanda mess still over the boarder Mobutu couldn't do much about it and Mobutu was overthrown in 1997. About 200K died in that war.

A year later in 1998 all hell breaks loss. A civil war starts and shortly aftwards a bunch of neighbouring and not so neighbouring countries jump in. Perhaps at first some have good intentions or are mearly their to aid their own ethnic group but it soon turns into a game of how much mineral wealth you can grab. So you've got a messy war with rather a lot of sides and a mix of militia and armies quite a few of which are not actualy trying to win. By the time the war finishes in 2003 3.9 million have died. On top of that the HIV rate is getting rather high casueing even more deaths.

Since then there has been one war of some significance and a bunch of minor clashes. Much of the country is still pretty much under the control of warlords rather than the central goverment so improvements have been rather limited.

[neutrino_cannon]

Mobutu did manage to embezzle about $5 bn from his country, so he was certainly the most corrupt African dictator of his era. I don't think he compares with Francisco Macias Nguema (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_Mac%C3%ADas_Nguema) for sheer insanity though.

Also, I'm curious where the 3.9 million dead figure for the Civil War came from. Most of the figures I had seen had uncertainty margins in the millions, and all anyone was confident to say was that it was the most lethal war since WWII.

Raping pygmies to get magical powers is a new one on me though. After chopping off women's arms with machetes, drugging children and forcing them to fight, and orthodox rape and murder, I didn't think that there were too many more atrocities that could be invented in Central Africa. They sure do have a way of surprising and impressing me though.

[jasonpatterson]

Remember that Octopi and related are very much of Japanese culture as a strongly ocean related country. Tentacle-human relations are not unique to anime there. And are not modern.

This isn't just "tentacle-human relations" that you might find in a 19th century painting. The film is filled with violent rape scenes and is (I believe) the first of the tentacle rape genre. It's messed up, plain and simple.

[Puppycow]

Basicaly because when europe was nabbing bits of africa the DRC was given to King Leopold II of Belgium . . .

Fail.

European colonialism was bad, but blaming that for today's problems is a cop-out. Tribes fighting and oppressing their neighbors was a fact of life everywhere.

King Leopold's butchery was better recorded and so we still remember it, but butchery was ubiquitous everywhere on all continents. The history of European butchery is just better recorded than some other places.

[shadron]

I really think it would be hard to blame superstitious rape of pygmies on colonialism. It would just be an exercise in self-flagellation.

[geni]

Fail.

European colonialism was bad, but blaming that for today's problems is a cop-out.

Where did I blame anyone?
Colonisation was a very big event in the recent history of african countries. Ignoreing recent history when trying to understand current events is a flawed aproach.

In order to understand why the DRC has worked out somewhat differently to other african states you do need to go back to it's colonial history because it's colonial history is rather different from other african states.


Tribes fighting and oppressing their neighbors was a fact of life everywhere.

Not really. Hunter gathers can fight but they have a hard time really oppressing. That requires the kind of numbers you need farming to support.

[geni]

I really think it would be hard to blame superstitious rape of pygmies on colonialism.


Thats probably a mix of the belifes that pygmies are magical (which is one of the reasons people were killing and eating them) with the idea that sex with a virgin can cure aids.

It would just be an exercise in self-flagellation.

self-flagellation? Unless King Leopold II makes the comment I can't see how that would apply.

[geni]

Mobutu did manage to embezzle about $5 bn from his country, so he was certainly the most corrupt African dictator of his era. I don't think he compares with Francisco Macias Nguema (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_Mac%C3%ADas_Nguema) for sheer insanity though.

The corruption isn't a huge issue. If he had been corrupt while improveing infrastructure and education levels and working on improveing relations between tribal groups it probably wounldn't have mattered very much.


Also, I'm curious where the 3.9 million dead figure for the Civil War came from. Most of the figures I had seen had uncertainty margins in the millions, and all anyone was confident to say was that it was the most lethal war since WWII.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16399152

[shadron]

I really think it would be hard to blame superstitious rape of pygmies on colonialism.
Thats probably a mix of the belifes that pygmies are magical (which is one of the reasons people were killing and eating them) with the idea that sex with a virgin can cure aids.
OK, so then colonialism is, in this instance of rape, not a cause. The cause would seem to be tribal tradition and willful pig-ignorance.

It would just be an exercise in self-flagellation.
self-flagellation? Unless King Leopold II makes the comment I can't see how that would apply.No, I was thinking more in the white man's burden sort of arena.

[geni]

OK, so then colonialism is, in this instance of rape, not a cause. The cause would seem to be tribal tradition and willful pig-ignorance.

Willful? Questionable. Schools require the kind infrastructure and stability that King Leopold II didn't bother with and the later Belgian authorities only made a half-hearted effort at. What happened to Patrice Lumumba probably didn't help matters.

Mobutu (backed by Belgium, France and the US) actualy provided the stability but not the infrastructure.

Since 1996 things have been too chatotic for much in the way of education to take place.


No, I was thinking more in the white man's burden sort of arena.

The DRC was never part of the major european empires and the worst bit of the colonisation was under King Leopold II's personal control.

[Fnord]

Blaming King Leopold and colonialism for one person raping another makes as little sense as blaming President Bush and imperialism for the atrocities at Abu Grebe prison.

No, the person to blame is the perpetrator.

Plain and simple.

[Puppycow]

Seriously. Went to see a showing in Ann Arbor many years ago of Urotsukidoji, completely unaware of what it was, besides animation.

Appalling. The creators of such entertainment have messed up minds.

I'm curious how this is possible. Surely you don't mean a "showing" in a theater? Hard to imagine a theater inflicting this on an unsuspecting public. And it would be rated at least NC-17 if not X, right?

[geni]

Blaming King Leopold and colonialism for one person raping another makes as little sense as blaming President Bush and imperialism for the atrocities at Abu Grebe prison.

Iraq wouldn't exist without imperialism which would have made I hard for the US to invade it.


No, the person to blame is the perpetrator.

Plain and simple.

Yeah simple and useless. Sure you can blame those involved. Feel better now?

People tend to a large extent to be products of their enviroment. Ignore the enviroment as you appear intent on doing and you pretty much destory your chances of being able to reduce and prevent future reoccurrences.

[Fnord]

Iraq wouldn't exist without imperialism which would have made I hard for the US to invade it.
.
Iraq would not exist if the ancient Babylonians had not moved in, so let's blame old Nebuchednezzar as well.
.
Yeah simple and useless. Sure you can blame those involved. Feel better now?
.
Now that you've submitted to a more rational determination, of course I feel better!
.
People tend to a large extent to be products of their enviroment. Ignore the enviroment as you appear intent on doing and you pretty much destory your chances of being able to reduce and prevent future reoccurrences.
.
Their immediate environment, perhaps. However, they have this thing called "Free Will" which allows them the capability to make decisions and take actions to affect their environment, and not just allow it to affect them. The very fact that they choose to sodomize those pygmies themselves when they could have freely chosen otherwise makes them the focus of all blame; not their environment, and not some dead European king.

[geni]

.
Now that you've submitted to a more rational determination, of course I feel better!


So for you emotional satifaction is more important than understandint the situation? Odd.


Their immediate environment, perhaps. However, they have this thing called "Free Will"which allows them the capability to make decisions and take actions to affect their environment, and not just allow it to affect them. The very fact that they choose to sodomize those pygmies themselves when they could have freely chosen otherwise makes them the focus of all blame; not their environment, and not some dead European king.

All blame? Hmm of course this is complete inconsistent with what the Milgram experiment tells us about human behavior thus rendering your approach irrational.

[Fnord]

So for you emotional satifaction is more important than understandint the situation? Odd.
.
Not more important - "icing on the cake" to speak metaphorically.
.
And I do understand the situation - "Some soldiers from the 85th Brigade sodomised three male pygmies to gain supernatural powers and protection in Kisa village in Walikale territory" - what is not to understand? Those soldiers were no pre-programmed automatons. They were human beings who exercise their free will and chose to sodomize other human beings, so they are to blame for their actions.
.
All blame? Hmm of course this is complete inconsistent with what the Milgram experiment tells us about human behavior thus rendering your approach irrational.
.
I took part in my university's own "Milgram Experiment" in 1979. I was among those who exercised free will and refused to induce electrical shocks - even though I had never heard of these experiments before, and I had no idea that the "victim" had been instructed to to only act as if he were being electrocuted.
.
It seems that even as a 21-year old undergraduate student at a midwestern "Party School" I knew that causing pain and suffering to others is just plain wrong. And contrary to published reports, some of us did insist that the "experiments" be terminated, even after it was revealed to us that the victim was only pretending to be receiving electrical shocks.
.
Now, which is more irrational: believing in free will through personal experience, or believing in "peer-group control" through anecdotal dogma?

[geni]

.
And I do understand the situation - "Some soldiers from the 85th Brigade sodomised three male pygmies to gain supernatural powers and protection in Kisa village in Walikale territory" - what is not to understand? Those soldiers were no pre-programmed automatons. They were human beings who exercise their free will and chose to sodomize other human beings, so they are to blame for their actions.


You think pygmies are human beings? Well thats not unreasonable. You are after all the product of a 20th century western civilisation. One of the values goverments have of late put a fair bit of effort into instilling of late is the idea of a broad concept of what really counts as a human being.

DRC hasn't had that. As a result the locals tend to view pygmies in much the same way as europeans used to consider jews and gypisies turned up to 11.


I took part in my university's own "Milgram Experiment" in 1979. I was among those who exercised free will and refused to induce electrical shocks - even though I had never heard of these experiments before, and I had no idea that the "victim" had been instructed to to only act as if he were being electrocuted.
.
It seems that even as a 21-year old undergraduate student at a midwestern "Party School" I knew that causing pain and suffering to others is just plain wrong.

Hard core pacifism is not a survival trait in the likes of the DRC.


And contrary to published reports, some of us did insist that the "experiments" be terminated, even after it was revealed to us that the victim was only pretending to be receiving electrical shocks.


Reports published on those exact experiments?


Now, which is more irrational: believing in free will through personal experience, or believing in "peer-group control" through anecdotal dogma?

Thats an impressive fallacy of the excluded middle amoung others.

[SlayerofCliffracers]

People are disgusting creatures. Why did God have to create them?

[Fnord]

People are disgusting creatures. Why did God have to create them?
.
Because evolution wasn't fast enough?
.
Your question begs the existence of God.

[LindaRosaRN]

For all their advantages, Americans aren't all that far removed from utterly insane, inhumane, and cultish pseudoscientific practices. For decades, states and the feds have been paying for "Attachment Therapists" to reenact rape with adopted and foster children by lying on top of them (semi-asphyxiating them) for hours at a time, licking their faces, and trying to terrify them. Survivor say the worst part is that their parents passively watch the ordeal. There are probably some 600-800 such therapists in the US today, all using coercive restraint in various styles of "therapy." Prosecutors have been reluctant to go after the therapists in related criminal child abuse cases because it would reveal state involvement.

[neutrino_cannon]

Hard core pacifism is not a survival trait in the likes of the DRC.


Living in the DRC generally is not conducive to extended survival.

[Cainkane1]

Mobutu did manage to embezzle about $5 bn from his country, so he was certainly the most corrupt African dictator of his era. I don't think he compares with Francisco Macias Nguema (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_Mac%C3%ADas_Nguema) for sheer insanity though.

Also, I'm curious where the 3.9 million dead figure for the Civil War came from. Most of the figures I had seen had uncertainty margins in the millions, and all anyone was confident to say was that it was the most lethal war since WWII.

Raping pygmies to get magical powers is a new one on me though. After chopping off women's arms with machetes, drugging children and forcing them to fight, and orthodox rape and murder, I didn't think that there were too many more atrocities that could be invented in Central Africa. They sure do have a way of surprising and impressing me though.
What about the beelief that albino flesh has magical powers and that many albinos are murdered and their body parts sold?

[SlayerofCliffracers]

.
Because evolution wasn't fast enough?
.
Your question begs the existence of God.

Well it certainly isn't evolutions fault. So it's clearly the devils fault.

The trouble you are then there is the basic theological question.

If there is a God, then why is there a Devil? :):):)

The basic problem is there is too little evidence for the existance of God and too much for the existance of the Devil.

[neutrino_cannon]

What about the beelief that albino flesh has magical powers and that many albinos are murdered and their body parts sold?

IIRC that's most prevalent in East and Southern Africa.

[CORed]

Where did I blame anyone?
Colonisation was a very big event in the recent history of african countries. Ignoreing recent history when trying to understand current events is a flawed aproach.

In order to understand why the DRC has worked out somewhat differently to other african states you do need to go back to it's colonial history because it's colonial history is rather different from other african states.



Not really. Hunter gathers can fight but they have a hard time really oppressing. That requires the kind of numbers you need farming to support.


If you think Africa's people were all hunter-gatherers before Europeans arrived, you are badly misinformed.